Mental illness exists everywhere in the world, of course, but mass shootings do not.
Jaime O'Neill
Posted inArticles
The burden of being different
I’ve told this story before. This is the abbreviated version. I’d just moved to a rural mountain community high in California’s Sierra Nevada, a young father with two kids and long hair. It was 1970, the Viet Nam war raged on, and wearing long hair was often enough to provoke some people, who, on occasion, […]
Posted inWotr
Water and waste are an old story
This resource in the American West will always be dammed, diverted or otherwise purloined.
Posted inWotr
Words to live by as the year winds down
Adages, quotes and sayings to inspire in 2014.
Posted inWotr
Thoughts on Presidents’ Day
Abraham Lincoln was among my earliest heroes as a kid. I grew up in Illinois, a state that inculcated a love of the 16th president from the first days of school. My hometown was the site of one of the most famous of his pre-presidential debates with Stephen Douglas, and I often ate an ice […]
Posted inWotr
Giving names to smoke and fire
We name fires the way we name hurricanes, giving them the identity that comes with our naming. Naming our fears also makes them a little more manageable, which is probably the main reason we go to the doctor, seeking a word for what ails us, because having that name is at least as comforting as […]
Posted inWotr
Feeding the deer
I live in a California mountain town that’s perched on a ridge that ascends toward the higher Sierras. The place was initially called Dogtown, and it boasts the distinction of being the site where California’s biggest-ever gold nugget was found. The town was supposed to be called “Magnolia,” but the poor spelling and/or penmanship of […]
Posted inWotr
Times are tough all over
It’s a crying shame how rich people are being treated these days. You hear a lot about their sufferings daily, especially if you read The Wall Street Journal. If black sharecroppers hadn’t invented the blues down there on the Mississippi Delta a hundred years or so ago, hedge-fund managers and bank CEOs would be coming […]
Posted inWotr
Oil in the swimming pool
Once, during a time when I was separated from my wife, I lived in an apartment complex with a large and inviting swimming pool. One day, when I went to take relief from the heat at that glistening oasis, I found it fouled by motor oil. The apartment manager was there, shaking her head, speculating […]
Posted inWotr
And you think times are tough
At a yard sale, I bought several boxes containing nearly a half-century’s worth of American Heritage magazines, that richly illustrated compendium of the nation’s history through good times and bad, with special attention paid to the droughts, downturns and disasters that tried the souls of our forebears. I paid $10 for more than 600 magazines. […]
Posted inJune 15, 2009: Let's Get Small
And you think times are tough
At a yard sale, I bought several boxes containing nearly a half-century’s worth of American Heritage magazines, that richly illustrated compendium of the nation’s history through good times and bad, with special attention paid to the droughts, downturns and disasters that tried the souls of our forebears. I paid $10 for more than 600 magazines. […]
Posted inWotr
The very worst thing about hard times
Studs Terkel died as last year drew to a close. He was one of the great chroniclers of life in the 20th century, gathering the oral histories of hundreds of Americans. Most were the people historians don’t trouble themselves with — people who pay the price when the historical figures bungle the task of running […]
Posted inFebruary 2, 2009: Non-navigable River Blues
Putting our house back in order
While Barack Obama was making his inaugural speech, I was vacuuming. I hadn’t planned to be engaged in that particular activity at that particular moment, but the deliverymen turned up early, bringing us a new bed at precisely the moment the new president began to speak. The floor was covered with dropcloths when the bed […]
Posted inWotr
You better watch out, that’s for sure
I’m as sentimental about Christmas as the next guy, but after years of listening to the holiday carols and Christmas standards, I find some troubling messages embedded in those songs. At the heart of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, for instance, is a small herd of really nasty reindeer. The song was written by an advertising […]
Posted inWotr
A field guide to the instant rural guy
Anyone who has moved to the mountains recently has learned of the existence of a distinct subspecies of human beings known familiarly as “flatlanders.” The first thing that needs to be understood about this group is that it is almost never found at sea level. Only when the flatlander takes residence at a higher altitude […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
Our Green Mountain
In Reno, Nev., there is a hole in the air where a hotel/casino once stood. Back in the 1980s, my wife and I sometimes stayed there. I stand across the street from it today, and I wonder where life goes. I gauge the approximate height of five or six stories, guess where a room would […]