Blog Archives
the smell of a quilt in the sun
I think a lot about the way old, soft, thin quilts smell when they are on a grassy lawn in the sun. The fragrance-memory is powerful.
And that’s why I was happy to discover this old family photo the other day. I’m the kid on the left* and while I don’t have a recollection of this exact moment, the photo evokes the essence of sun-warmed cotton fabric.
My mom was 31 when this photo was made, but she looks heartbreakingly young. And those glasses? I’d wear them right this minute.
vintage family photo, dated 1959
Lubbock, Texas
*I think that, as a three year old, I had a remarkably strong side-eye game.
the significance of the bell
I am not going to tell you why the now-closed Fort Mason Inn has an old-fashioned bell on their sign. But only because I don’t know…
Mason, Texas
photographed 4.12.2026
fleeting brevity of pleasure
Wildflowers/weeds are brave: they just grow wherever they want to and don’t even care.
I spotted these flowers, which were at once tenacious and fragile, growing in front of an abandoned, scary motel. The flowers were doing what they could to, in the time they had, to soften the scene.
Mason, Texas
photographed 4.12.2026
terrestrial reception
I like Mason. It’s a comfortable town, an easy drive from Lubbock. The town square is interesting, especially at night when light retreats into the corners and a plywood-covered window becomes profound.
Mason, Texas
photographed 4.11.2026
the endurance of a hopeless love
Sometimes I like to read through my Dictionary of Symbols* to look for phrases that jump out at me. In fact, this is becoming a fairly regular part of my workflow, the last part of the process of editing a photo. I’ll look up the symbology of a particular element in the photo (in this case, I looked up the word “branch”) and see what series of words appeals to me and seems to add a mysterious narrative to the image.
And that’s how this image acquired the name “the endurance of a hopeless love.”
Fort McKavett State Historical Park
Fort McKavett, Texas
photographed 4.12.26
*And you thought my thesaurus addiction was at the goofiest thing about me!
