Will Write for Food

I see a cartoon in my future...me standing beside an intersection on Memorial Road, holding up a cardboard sign that says "Will Write for Food."

I'm amused, sort of.

I'm facing a long summer with severely reduced income. That's why I need more students enrolled in two classes I'm supposed to teach. Under a new system at UCO, if enough don't sign up to match my salary, they toss the students out, and nail my salary. I currently have 18 and 22 in the classes--Blogging in June and the Press in Film in July-- and need more. If you know of any prospects, talk them into it, please.

This also explains why I'm writing for the Journal Record this month. I'm thankful to Ted Streuli and the folks at the JR for using me as a freelancer  until a new energy and real estate reporter shows up in a couple of weeks. And it is a breath of fresh air in my life as I get out of my comfort zone and enjoy being a journalist again. I'm already writing for food. Will do more. Rates are reasonable.

In the meantime, I'm, designing my cardboard sign.

Spring trips

Spring and May mean travel time most years.... The minute you're outside of the city limits, you sigh and breathe more freely.
Photos from previous years...

Fort Worth skyline from inside the Amon Carter Museum

Telluride and the San Juan mountains from a restaurant at the top of a ski lift

Dallas Divide in the San Juans. Telluride is on the other side of those 14,000 + feet peaks. This is where the famous horseback shootout with John Wayne in True Grit was shot.

Elk in a field just outside Telluride.

Mother's Day flowers

I couldn't find these the day I wrote about the trip to the cemetery. From a couple of years ago....

Sunrise, Great Plains

Watercolor, 140# paper
  6" x 12"

Where there is hope amid isolation

Mothers' Day Memories

Francis Faye Culp Clark

I'm usually on the road on this day every year, traveling south on U.S. 81 to the windswept hilltop cemetery at Waurika, where Mom is buried.

Jerry, Mom and Terry  ready to board the train in Albuquerque

Before I leave, I load a gallon  container of water and a gardening trowel. I stop at a Wal-Mart and buy red and yellow periwinkles or petunias. Once the two  hour trip is finished, I drive through the town where we spent 12 years raising family and running the newspaper, driving past memories, and head west on U.S. 70 to the cemetery, just a few miles north of the Red River and Mom's native Texas. Gravel crunches under the tires as I pull off the pavement and head to her grave.

There are usually birds singing, and the wind is blowing. Sparse Sunday morning traffic whizzes by. I'm usually alone. Plastic flowers and cut flowers adorn many of the graves.

Mom and I talk for a while. I occasionally sit down in the grass and write a letter to her. Then I get the water, the trowel and the flowers from the car, dig a small hole at the top of her gravestone, pour in the water and plant the flowers. Oh, I know they won't last long, but that's ok. She deserves live flowers.

Mom's Southwestern Bell basketball team, 1929. She's front row, right.

Then I pour water on the stone, washing off the dirt. The wind quickly dries the stone off, except for the water in the incised letters of her name and the dates:

Francis Faye Culp Clark

1909 1980

It takes longer to evaporate, like the memories that linger year after year. Mom and I talk some more. Then I wander through the cemetery, recognizing  the names of many of the people I used to work with or know. I come back to Mom's grave, almost all the moisture gone, bend down and kiss her name, say goodbye and start heading north.

I didn't make it this year, but will one weekend soon.

Mom's family...Mom, sister Vera (Sissie), her mother Elizabeth, sister Gladys, brother E.T. in Sissie's Dallas apartment, 1950s.