Susie’s Back

haherazade has been arriving at my front door two or three times a week, bubbling with enthusiasm. She has been great for my spirit, which has been in the dumps the past few months. Hence, the horrible neglect to my journaling. I’m not sure what that’s all about. I could blame it on the weather, which has been gray and wet. Autumn rain does very little good on the desert. The clouds just block the sunlight. Or maybe it’s that existential loneliness magnified by life in the expanse of unlimited horizons. Or a yearning which comes over me occasionally to be back among a coterie of like-minded journalists in some warm California clime. Then, Shaherazade comes in with a story about her family or school or something she’s read, and leaves with me smiling. I have decided to give her permission to write to this blog after the first of…

Shaherazade Becomes My Assistant

onday’s knock came at 5 pm, just as my apartment approached the temperature necessary to roast a suckling pig. Not the best time for a guest. And I have to say, young Shaherazade’s sweet face and bright eyes were about the last thing I expected to see when I opened my door, her grin, large and genuine, beaming up at me, belied by the worry lines etched like an old woman’s in her twelve-year-old forehead. “Welcome, welcome,” I said, motioning her inside.  She hesitated for a long moment. I could see the synapses firing behind those intelligent eyes, trying to judge an awkward situation.  “Would you like some of my homemade iced tea?” I coaxed. “It’s sweet, and I put fresh mint in it.”  “She nodded and stepped in, wiping her brow with the back of her hand, and looking curiously around my apartment. “I would like that. Thank you…

A Visit to Charlebois Springs

Okay, it’s tourist season. At least as far as tourism goes here in Wilbur County. Don’t get me wrong, it can be quite a big thing when the folks up north have a conference or some other kind of shindig. But usually, sleepy Wilbur is just that. But Dad asked me to visit the Walkingsticks out at Charlebois Springs to find out how the resort is going. I was actually happy to do this. Willie is a interesting guy, and the history of the springs—well, that’s interesting, too. Not to mention that six-year-old Century June is cute as a bug’s ear, to boot. Since it’s summer, and Shaherazade has been hanging around nearly every day, I asked her to accompany me. She was excited. June and her little sister, Ruth were in the same first grade class, and when she first met Century June, Shaherazade had immediately fallen in love…

Subject Minus

y meeting with Subject Minus blew away most of the preconceptions I may have had about EcoSurvival Village. I guess that I had expected the humorless, world-on-my-shoulders leftist types I had encountered as a reporter in California. But, these folks seemed to be mocking that whole depressing scene.  “That’s the whole point, in a way,” said Minus, when I put the question to her, piercing me with intense, black eyes from the shadow of her hat brim. “You can’t let the world get to you like that. You have to laugh at yourself, and the circus around you. You have to laugh at God. Otherwise she will destroy you with the weight of her indifference.”  Such wisdom for someone so young! I thought, although I never said so, because, almost as soon as the idea came to me, I had a concurrent thought. It was that these people were playing…