Gone Away
Dispatches from a life in America
270 posts
A Mulberry Childhood
(This is one of a series of articles I wrote dealing with memories of an African childhood. To read the first of these, click here ) I had a mulberry childhood. By this I mean that, growing up in Africa, I had no…
Space
Over in another world in this other world called the internet I have been writing of the beauties of space as now being shown by the latest astronomical equipment. Just one example will suffice, and this one has been…
Runt
Farmer Giles trudged across the courtyard towards the barn. It was time to deal with the runt. It was not that Giles was a hard man; indeed, by farming standards, he had allowed this business of the runt's survival to…
Card Art
Many years ago in Zimbabwe I had a friend named Phil - the same guy who appears in my post entitled Chimanimani in fact. I mentioned that he was a photographer but that says very little about Phil's artistic talent; he…
Motor Racing Memories
A few days ago, my son, Mad, was telling me about a motorbike race he attended at Silverstone. It was one of a national series, not one of the international MotoGP races, and so was a lot less restricted and he was able…
Toby
Toby knew this one, the tall man who smelled of smoke, slow and rich, surrounding him with an aura of dimness that was streaked with hints of a sharper and more vibrant odor that stung the nostrils. The man was speaking…
Sunbirds
(This is one of a series of articles I wrote dealing with memories of an African childhood. To read the first of these, click here ) Two Eyes has (appropriately enough) two videos of hummingbirds at his bird feeder -…
Forests
New England is all about trees. They cover the landscape in cloaking forests, invade the towns, supply the wood that builds the houses and their leaves define the seasons. They are winning the battle against humankind…
Blog It Anyway
I wrote this some time ago as a comment on this blog. It was related to nothing in particular; I just felt like writing it so it went into the comments of some post or other. Now I've found it again and, being short of…
Vikings
Over at Syntagma , John Evans has discovered that he has viking genes. Apparently, he has "a minor medical condition which affects the small finger tendon in the palm of a hand" and this only occurs in those with…
The Art of Fireworks
I used to think I knew about public firework displays. Throughout the old British Empire, November 5th is Guy Fawkes Day, a time when fireworks are set off by small boys determined on their own destruction and people…
Truth and Intelligence
One of my commenters (and we all know that Gone Away has the best commenters on the net, don't we?), Fragile Industries , has posted an article entitled Inconvenient Truth and "Truthiness" . In reading this, I was…
The Fountain of Youth
In his book, She , Henry Rider Haggard writes of a woman who had lived for thousands of years through immersion in the fabled fountain of youth . Although Haggard's version turns out to be a pillar of flame, it is…
Gone Blogging
I must apologize to regular readers for the slow posting rate over the last week or two. The problem is that I have taken on another blog in the Syntagma network. While posts for the new blog do not consume a great deal…
Death Rides
Denton awoke on the bus, standing, swaying with the crowd who had been too late to find seats. His hand gripped a strap that hung from the roof but there was no real need for such support; he could not have fallen in…
Don't Quote Me...
Quite often on the net, we are given the opportunity to include a favorite quote in the forms that we fill in. On most of mine, you will find the words, "What's done is dung", which is actually a quote from myself. But…
A Picture Post
(This is one of a series of articles I wrote dealing with memories of an African childhood. To read the first of these, click here ) For some time I have been without any photographs from way back when, those photos…
Oh Zimbabwe
(This is one of a series of articles I wrote dealing with memories of an African childhood. To read the first of these, click here ) As regular readers will know, this blog has encouraged me to mine my memories of a…
Josie 1
In my recent post entitled Brutus and the Bully , I mentioned Josie, my first and greatest Staffordshire Bull Terrier. Having grown up with Staffies, it was always my intention to get one as soon as we had a place with…
The Invaders
"Sammy, we need to talk about why you're here." Dr. Newman rolled a pencil in his fingertips as he watched the asylum's longest term inmate. Sammy looked away under his gaze. "You know why I'm here, Doc. It's because…