I was never a cat person. I still have a scar on my left index finger, the gift of the irate Siamese who bit me when I was four. And I was allergic to cats when young. I was allergic to many irritants, actually, but cats were among the worst. My eyes would itch, then …
Author: Gary Parkerson
The Pedaling Astronomer
pollywogs
The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words – Elliot Erwitt. An able photographer would convey that the tadpoles’ shallow pool was but a small sample of roadways flooded by early-summer storms that inundated the U.S. heartlands that season, leaving destruction and yet, yes, life, in …
a good story
When he realized the load I was pedaling versus the journey ahead, a new friend chastised that I had planned poorly. Conceding I had indeed scant strategy, I continued, “But which story is more compelling? One: I anticipated and prepared for every eventuality. There were no surprises. Or two: I had no idea what I’d …
needs in the time of covid
“Life’s too short,” says Jill, explaining why she was quitting an acting gig in a commercial. “You gotta do what makes you happy.” “Yeah,” Jack, an advertising executive, responds. “The thing is, people don’t know what makes them happy. They think they know, because we tell them. Real happiness is bad for sales.” (Jack and …
a snapshot of everywhere
Scene: A pair of bare athletic legs and shoe-less feet, revealed from mid-thigh below a privacy partition screening the back work area of a rural post office from its front-facing public space, legs dancing – and dancing well! – without the least inhibition, to Johnny Cash’s I’ve Been Everywhere playing on the small space’s single …
photographs and journal notes and other stuff of memories
I hiked desert mountains of the U.S. Southwest with a retired Boston firefighter, whom I met while pedaling a remote Nevada road. The incongruity of his lush New England accent amid those vast arid settings was reminder that we are all travelers, each on our own peculiar journey through time. Among the surprises of that …
Continue reading photographs and journal notes and other stuff of memories
ghost over central park
She stood waiting in the lobby of her building, shushing the nurse worrying over her – both giggling – devotion, each to the other, obvious in every gesture. I gasped, “Oh, but she is gorgeous! You didn’t warn me!” My companions had described her age, but little else. Childlike yet poised, delicate yet enduring, unpretentious …
trace encounters – why we wander
“Y’all okay?” It was a bright, postcard-worthy Saturday afternoon on the Natchez Trace Parkway. A steady north breeze pushed Southern Mississippi’s oppressive humidity back to the Gulf of Mexico, to the relief of all but the few Nashville-bound bicycling tourists for whom it served a challenging headwind. “Need me to come down there?” His voice, …
aerodynamic and metabolic reality
It’s hard work pedaling/pushing a loaded bike up a mountain, but the mountain pays you back with an equal descent, right? Often the same day? (Warning: Math ahead!) But air is weighty – about two pounds per cubic yard (almost 1.3 kilograms per cubic meter) at the altitudes and temperatures where most of us live. …
why travel by bike?
I had driven the first 400 miles of monotonous interstate highway with thoughts anywhere but on the task of piloting my old van. Even at 80 miles per hour, the 1200 miles that remained seemed to pass in slow motion … until the incongruity of a fellow struggling an overloaded bike up a steep grade …
The Pedaling Astronomer Project 