by Jody | Arizona Life, Human Condition
For at least ten years, there has been a man I presume to be homeless who I encounter from time to time near the stores and strip malls that I go to. He has now become sunburned the color of tobacco juice, but I think that at one time his hair had been light brown....
by Jody | Arizona Life, Human Condition
I was coming up the access road next to the freeway near my home. I had been to the grocery store, and my distress at the current cost of food was still fresh. It was 113 degrees, late summer on the desert, and the drivers around me seemed more aggressive than usual....
by Jody | Arizona Life, Family, Human Condition
It’s Christmas time, and during an ordinary year — regardless of how rough a year may have been — I put up the Christmas tree. Much is written — probably too much — about how meaningful it is to relive memories as ornaments are unwrapped...
by Jody | Arizona Life, Backyard Nature
My mother loved birds. She studied them, fed them, followed them, and learned to whistle their intricate calls. Not only can I not whistle, but I don’t have the attention span to learn and retain everything my mother knew about birds. But, there is no question...
by Jody | Arizona Life, Human Condition
We built the house as quickly as we could, because the children we had adopted needed bedrooms and a place to play. The neighborhood was so raw and new that there were no neighbors. But as other houses were added, and other households took roots, we were different....
by Jody | Arizona Life, Human Condition
When I was in junior high, they segregated the boys and the girls for health class. We didn’t particularly care for the arrangement, because half the fun of health class was watching each other make fun of the charts of the human body. However, one morning there...
