whirlwind spokane trip

Brad and his daughter Christine in Manito Park, Spokane

downtown Spokane

Ryland Walker Cosby

Cosby squared

Ryland and Brad doing some male bonding (sans cigars)

Ryland checking out his picture on my phone

muy feliz madre

nice moment caught with cell phone camera

Grampo and Emily

i read this today. i needed to hear it.

"Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense." --Gilead

billy collins. yes. again.

The way the dog trots out the front door
every morning
without a hat or an umbrella,
without any money
or the keys to her doghouse
never fails to fill the saucer of my heart
with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example
of a life without encumbrance--
Thoreau in his curtainless hut
with a single plate, a single spoon?
Gandhi with his staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world
with nothing but her brown coat
and her modest blue collar,
following only her wet brown nose,
the twin portals of her steady breathing,
followed by the plume of her tail.

If only she did not shove the cat aside
every morning
and eat all his food
what a model of self-containment she would be,
what a paragon of earthly detachment.
If only she were not so eager
for a rub behind the ears,
so acrobatic in her welcomes,
if only I were not her god.

--Dharma
Billy Collins

need vs. want

I need to do my statistics homework.

All I want to do is swim, walk, and read. All the days.


Staring at my statistics book right now. I'm going to do this.

I am.

man in space

All you have to do is listen to a man
sometimes when he talks to his wife at a table of people
and notice how intent he is on making his point
even though her lower lip is beginning to quiver,

and you will know why the women in science
fiction movies who inhabit a planet of their own
are not pictured making a salad or reading a magazine
when the men from earth arrive in their rocket,

why they are always standing in a semicircle
with their arms folded, their bare legs set apart,
their breasts protected by hard metal disks.


--Billy Collins