My Cousin Elmo says, “There isn’t much difference between having a lot of patience and not giving a shit.”

Her mother drowned in the lake while saving her. For that, the six-year-old suffered both verbal and physical abuse at the hands of her father. Daily, he shouted and cursed her, calling her a witch. In the evening, while drinking, he beat her with his hairbrush. By the time she was ten, Sally believed that…

Without spilling names, I had two incidents involving the spirit world and one involving the Holy Spirit. I’ll discuss them in order of occurrence. While seated in a Virginia City, Nev., bar, I saw a man in what I believed to be a black trench coat on the far side of the saloon. The next…

Standing at my office window, I could do little but watch as the situation moved from bad to worse. By the time I grabbed my first-out bag and made it to the scene in front of my house, it was nearly over. He had fallen on his back when I rushed from the room. By…

I spent my morning trying to help my wife understand why people do not live up to the promises. She worked for a married couple for thirty years, managing their business. Back then, she could ask for help with minor home improvement projects and get all the help she needed as one of the business…

During this past week, as we lived through heavy bouts of thick wildfire smoke in Northern Nevada, I watched people wearing masks choke on the odor. Their masking-up did them no good, physically. Logic suggests that if they could smell the smoke, they were breathing in and choking on particulates. Now, the average size of…

It has been very hard to sit and write today. My mind is elsewhere, unfortunately. So I am falling back on an old process I used back in the day, writing whatever comes to mind in five minutes. And I don’t worry about grammar, spelling, or punctuation. I won’t be going that long. Anyway, I…

Independence weekend began with a plume of smoke. A wildfire that the forest service called the Beckwourth Complex. Soon the Tamarack and the Dixie Fires followed. Each new blaze brought even more smoke into the valley. Eventually, the haze grew so thick that he could no longer see the homes across the street. Not even…

My Cousin Elmo says, “My high school was so poor that they taught sex education and drivers-ed in the same car.”

She pulled into the parking spot and sent me inside the store to buy some condoms. I could not believe my luck on this full-moon night. I looked back at her to make sure she was real. As I passed through the doorway, I felt a sudden wave of nausea overcome me. Perhaps I was…