Letter from Home appears weekly in Flagstaff Live! each Thursday, and is written by a rotating cast of Flagstaff-based writers, including Michael Wolcott, Peter Friederici, Laura Kelly, Margaret Erhart, Stacy Murison, and Katie King. This site includes archived columns from Tony Norris, Shonto Begay, Jean Rukkila, Darcy Falk, Kate Watters, Allison Gruber, and some guest writers. Click the Read More button below any of these posts to read the full version and view any images that the authors have shared.
Greater Than Ten Percent
What a year to be teaching a class titled “Imagining the Apocalypse.” Barely three weeks into the fall semester, dire warnings came out from the creators of various companies of artificial intelligence who gathered to tell the tale of our demise via social media. According to The Guardian, several industry insiders warned that there was a “greater than 10 percent chance” that AI would cause human extinction by 2030. Some other insiders softened the blow by stating it would be the beginning of the end of humanity. I did what any...
read moreFalling Waters
The calendar read September, but the air was muggy and still when my wife and I had the good fortune this month to visit Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece of a house that is considered by more than one expert to be one of America’s greatest contributions to world architecture. It’s in Pennsylvania—deeply rural Pennsylvania, that is, where it has for almost 90 years now jutted out over the cascading creek locals call Bear Run. I’m not sure “jutted out” is really the right wording. When you’re standing on the bridge that’s needed...
read moreA Difficult Hope
We must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. — Wendell Berry While much of the planet mourned for Dolly Parton last month, another vital American voice fell silent. Though not a household name, Wendell Berry was as important to the world of letters as Dolly was to the world of music. Berry, who died two weeks ago at 92, was a farmer-poet whose elegant writing helped to inspire the sustainable-agriculture and local food movements. In a...
read moreBehind Every Smile
Our family dentist, Dr. Handelman, was a burly fellow with movie star looks and thick fingers that didn’t easily fit inside a child’s mouth. The movie star looks were possibly what had clinched my mother’s decision in choosing the man—I often wondered if she chose him from a lineup—but he caused so much pain to her children that even in the waiting room she could hear our muffled cries of distress. These were the days when teeth, children’s teeth in particular, seemed to be made of cavities. There was novocaine, of course, delivered to the...
read morePatience
As I walked through a torrential downpour to move back into my campus office last week, I realized that I’ve been at what I consider my “new” teaching position for five years now. It felt like a big risk at the time to leave behind something I knew to leap into the unknown, also during a monsoon rain. But my past self did a great job recognizing that this transition had the potential not only to make me a better teacher, but also a better human. After five years, I’m not sure that I have an exact answer to what being a better human actually...
read moreLibraries large and little
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” –Dr. Seuss from his book, “I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!” Two weeks ago, I was wending through an unfamiliar Munds Park neighborhood. My map app told me to turn left at the next street. I did. “Your destination is on the right,” it announced, and then I spotted it — a Little Free Library, one of about 85,000 dotted around the country. This one sat on the curb’s edge beside a cluster of recycling bins. It was a royal blue,...
read moreEpitaph for the Desert Cottonwoods
It must have been 1990 when I encountered the writing of Charles Bowden for the first time, not coincidentally when I first found myself traipsing around the Sonoran Desert in winter and early spring. For a young man from the suburban Midwest the scenery was a revelation: mountains stood like purple cardboard cutouts on dawn horizons, then transformed themselves into textured slopes of bright stone punctuated with saguaro exclamation points. In between creosote flats spread out so broadly that they seemed as much a mental exercise in how...
read moreThe Stuff of Life
The desperation in Manhattan was anything but quiet in 1991. After six years in the frantic, ear-grinding angst of the city, I was ready for a drastic change. While considering my next move I studied Thoreau’s Walden for guidance. “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” old Henry advised, harrumphing about all the needless things we humans can’t seem to get along without: “Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life” he wrote, “are not only not indispensable but positive hindrances...
read moreThings that happened over 3 of 16 days I get with my child between summer camps and state lines. (A letter from/to home in list form)
– Spilled red chile iced coffee in my lap in Gallup. – Had a pit bull sleep next to me all night, farting. – Saw a coyote. – Wrote on a receipt at a bar. – Saw a dog ring a doorbell. – Saw a dog willingly jump in a stroller for a ride. – Drove through 10% visibility in a monsoon on the highway near Leupp. – Ripped up a check by accident. – Experienced the glory of not driving anywhere for three days. – Tried psyllium husk with hesitation. – Became intrigued by my...
read moreSay Their Names; Discovering what it means to be an American
One summer, years ago, I lived in Washington D.C. while studying American Sign Language at Gallaudet University. Every Friday afternoon, after classes were over, I’d get on the bus and go down to the National Mall where I would wander among the monuments with no particular destination and little purpose except the purpose of trying to discover what it meant to me to be an American. That I might discover such an abstraction there on the National Mall seems only naïve now, but at the time it was a good and honest endeavor. The monument I...
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