I’m foaming at the mouth about Kris Allen.  I can’t help it.  It’s the general enthusiasm that people have in Arkansas about other folks from Arkansas that does it to me, every time.   I could give a rat’s ass about boxing, for example.  I never watche… Read full post »

Trig Palin recent put out an Open Call about things that set our hinies to painin'.   I thought I'd join in the fun.    

Firstly:  

Flakey people.  Look, I respect flakey.  I respect being a little scattered.  I’m the same way myself, actually. … Read full post »

I wish it would stop raining for two days in a row.  I want just the lack of thunder rattling the windows at night and the dogs pooping on the deck because they are too prissy to go into the wet yard.  I wish for dryness just long enough for that… Read full post »

So our friend Sheena had a birthday a few days ago.  My husband went to the Blue Cake Company in Little Rock and had this made for her:  

If you know Sheena, you know that she's definitely one of those people who the advertising folks had in mind when they… Read full post »

Note: I have officially turned into one of those crazy people who does a thing like write a letter to her dogs.

Dear Opal and Dacotah,

Let me set the scene for you:

“God Damn It All to Hell.”  I actually said/… Read full post »

I woke up at 4:30 a.m.  This is an anomaly so rare that my husband was ready to turn it into a symptom.  I’ve spent the past week or so in the depths of “stomach despair.”  In our parlance, we’ve just started calling it “an attack.” 

“We… Read full post »

Rocks!!! Thank you Ric Tresa for making my space so much cooler!  I can't tell you how excited I am!  I think it looks awesome and I love it. 

You rock in every way :).   Read full post »

So apparently the only two people in the greater Little Rock area obsessed enough with OS to show up at the anniversary party were me and Fabflamingo, my artist compadre from across the river in Argenta.   

We met up at a place close to my heart -- The Oyster Bar.… Read full post »

A Mini Travelogue

Marble, Colorado

Circa July 2000

His students call him Godpotter. Every summer, for thirty years, one or two have come to his house to learn.  When they are outside his house, Thanos Johnson minds his own business.  “Bed, board and morals… Read full post »

I was a Dave Cullen fan before I read Columbine.  He once very generously sent me an extremely thorough and interesting note explaining the inner workings of publishing to me. It was more useful than anything anyone told me in five yea/… Read full post »

(Photo from the public domain).  

It is Sunday morning and we are deep into our respective rituals:  The Norwegian listens to 103.7 The Buzz, to worship at the altar of local talk-show host Bill Vickery.  I read OS and work on whatever little projects I’ve got going on in… Read full post »

I’ve been sort of absent from OS the past couple of weeks.  It’s a matter of things piling up that interrupted my momentum.  The Norwegian and I went to Memphis during the last weekend in March to celebrate our first anniversary.   Then I got/… Read full post »

Not mine, but this great slideshow by ABC news shows the double disaster North Dakota is facing right now.  You can see it here.   

We're keeping tabs on this closely in our house because the husband (Your Norwegian Uncle) is from Hatton, ND.  He was born in Mandan, which is… Read full post »

My mom is a particular type of southern woman.  I don’t really have a good term for them, but I can describe them:  

These are the southern women who regularly say just a little too much to spice up the conversation.  They say most things in an unbelievably/… Read full post »

Without fail, every single Northerner I’ve ever brought home to Arkansas thinks I’m insane the first time I mention chocolate gravy and biscuits.   They imagine some bizarre combination of saw tooth gravy with chocolate mixed in, or maybe country gravy with cocoa o/… Read full post »

I parked my car on the side of the road, trying to decide if I had enough light to let the dogs out.  I was parked at the top of a steep trail that wound a half-mile or so down a steep ridge to the bank of Big Piney Creek.  … Read full post »

Okay, so maybe this is because my experience is in academia and I have a soft spot for writer’s conferences.   Maybe it’s because I’ve been a member of some other online communities that regularly host community events.  Either way, I’m wondering if anyone in th… Read full post »

 Me on my wedding day, getting caught sneaking a smoke.  See how my morally corrupt smoker's soul shows through my creepy red eyes?  

I graduated from high school in the early 1990’s, when  grunge and heroin chic were big and it was temporar… Read full post »

I’ve been annoyed with my father’s family recently.  It’s not worth getting into, except to know that I just discovered I’m more of an outcast than I realized.  

I know all the reasons for my black sheep status: I don’t go to church, I still have no kids,… Read full post »

Yesterday, my husband’s best friend, Patty, called him and asked if we wanted to go out Saturday night for a quick Valentine’s dinner.  I haven’t even mentioned the holiday because he already knows that I have no desire to participate. I’m happy to go to dinner; I just do… Read full post »

When I first read the question “what is your ultimate vision for this country as it relates to sustainable mobility?” I thought, “define ‘sustainable mobility’ for whom?” 

For the average middle-class American living in suburbia, this means one thing. For a r… Read full post »

The Arkansas Canoe Club regularly set the slalom gates just down river from Long Pool, where the river narrows and forms the first rapid of the Long Pool to Twin Bridges run on Big Piney Creek in Pope County, Arkansas. 

The rapid there is formed by a thick… Read full post »

You can find the first part of this story here, and the second part here.  

Finding Sylvia Rena cemetery, though, turned out to be another chore all together.  We found it on the map, but we couldn’t find in reality. We drove up and down a mile stretch of highway, incap/… Read full post »

Part I of this series is here. 

We realized, after some discussion  over pizza in our Motel-6 that we’d probably been standing on the family’s homestead at one point the night before. 

We did a little map-searching and document cross-checking in preparation to find th… Read full post »