I'm sorry Cooper

Cooper and I talk occasionally, outside of the law school, when I'm walking to my car.

He told me of a daughter who lives in Orlando. He told me he has a court date there in February. He told me he's selling these magazine subscriptions and it would be a big help if I would buy one. He told me he won't go back to Orlando for Thanksgiving or Christmas because he can't afford it. He asked me if I ever worked before in my life. When I told him a worked construction and then worked for a newspaper, he said, "good, good, then you know what it means to work."

"I can't buy a newspaper subscription, I have no money for that," I said. He said, "That's ok."

We still talk occasionally, outside of the law school.

He dresses nicely, gold and blue tie and a white collared shirt.

It's good to see Cooper.

Raleigh, NC

11-27-2011

These Things I Miss

Jazz records playing on a vinyl record, pouring music into the second story of the coffeehouse. Irish coffee in the morning and stumbling onto cobblestone streets. Speaking poor German to Germans who always looked interested, never were demeaning, in what I was trying to say.

-- Raleigh, NC

1-11-2011

Alan, who plays pipes at the Irish jam session

Alan, who plays pipes in the Irish jam session,

and looks like a hard-time living man, raisin-wrinkled

face, white and nicotine stained beard, blue

overalls, says his home is the oldest

log cabin left in Raleigh, and collects original

Irish records, recorded in the early 20th Century, lived once

in Sarasota, Florida,

where he said he'd "do"

a red headed girl who

was "something.

She

was really something else."

-- Raleigh, NC

9/25/2011

In Raleigh, listening to

Those bands playing

the alt-country music

in the bars downtown, who

were young once, not

long ago. Today, they

play not a desperate

song, or a youngman's

song, but a cool PBR

song, or a Budweiser

song, or a Coors -- Banquet beer! --

song, yes, a song about all of a man's many

wrongs, sounding like a

long and winding drive into the mountains

of Appalachia and into Tennessee and further

and further into the rest of the west.

-- Raleigh, 9-11-2011

I'm judging you too

When you see me walk out of the 24-hour

pharmacy with a bottle of wine and a bag of coffee

I hope you think, such an efficient young man.

He doesn't waste his time.

Redlands, CA

March 7, 2011

Driving into the Lucerne Valley

Driving into the Lucerne Valley

The Lucerne Valley was on the dead side of the San Bernardino Mountains. There’s a scientific term for that side of the mountain, leeward. The Lucerne Valley felt and looked like desert. Driving down from Big Bear Lake on Highway 18, the pine trees disappeared after only 10 miles and then there were only boulders, dirt and a road snaking through the canyon until it levels out in the valley. In the valley, there were a few Joshua Trees, but mostly there were only dirt fields and one ranch, ranched off by wood posting and a house pinned fearlessly up against the mountain as if to say, peril be damned here.

Here, a rancher lived. He owned four horses. They could run among the ranch’s 100 acres, if they were so inclined. But that day, like most days, they did little except stand near the troff in the corral against the little ranch house. They were sickly mustangs, thinning and boney. One colored black, one brown, one beige and one white, so American.

The American rancher who lived there was Gram. He was the last rancher in the Lucerne Valley. But his lifestyle was one that he could no longer sustain. And even though he owned the property -- property his father had purchased in 1917 -- Gram could no longer pay the property tax, he could no longer purchase feed for his four horses and there were few prospects in southern California’s High Desert for a rancher to do whatever a rancher does. The bank he borrowed money from was going to do what banks do when payments aren’t made.

Gram was 85 years old.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!