Monthly Archives: December 2017


A Gift from the Orient 2

We needed souvenirs for ranching men, and what better than knives? But Chinese gift-shopkeepers carried no knives. A knife, given as a gift, would signify the giver’s wish to cut off the friendship. We walked the length of the Jiuzhaigou shopping street, asking for knives at each shop.  No one had a knife, but when we walked past those same shops on our way back to the hotel, the sellers met us on the sidewalk to offer knives of all kinds.  This one isn’t sturdy enough for ranch work, or much of anything else, and we were skeptical of the […]


Discovering Meaning

Who’d have thought an obscure canyon in west Texas shelters the oldest known writings in the Americas?  These icons were painted about the time the pyramids were going up in Egypt. I’d never fully connected primitive pictures with writing, but these images very likely hold a message. Over time the same basic symbols show a progression from confusingly detailed to simple and more symbolized, a slow tightening to letters. The exhibit’s explanation of that stripping down and stylizing tendency strikes a chord here. It’s what I do with every draft I write: enhance character while stripping out non-essential detail, words, even syllables. Since the meaning […]