like normal people

So declared the marquee of a Houston patio bar. I heard lots of lawyer jokes when I worked as an attorney. Most weren’t great, but I was delighted that others enjoyed sharing them with me. My favorite? “How many lawyer jokes are there, anyway? Only three. The rest are true stories.” Despite my years of …

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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 …

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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 …

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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, …

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