Living and writing, learning and dreaming in Juneau, Alaska.
Filigrees of frost — then sun, between pleats of cloud, a softness that is somehow loud.
A Collection of Explosions My journals are not neat and precise, though I greatly admire such documents. Instead, my journals are a messy collection of impressions, words, overheard conversations and explosions. Opening one of my notebooks can be dangerous, like picking at a scab or skating out on ice that is too… Read More
Railroad track ephemera: found composition Anchorage, Alaska – jl Breakup Breakup in Alaska occurs when the temperatures rise and ice-bound rivers and lakes began to break apart. Water begins to flow. When we lived along the Yentna River I recall standing outside listening to the sounds of breakup: icicles dripping from… Read More
family album As I work on revisions of WHERE THE RIVER IS A ROAD I find myself thinking of the origins of stories. I consider the maps embedded in those narratives. The short memory piece that follows refers back to some of the early collective stories I experienced. It is the visceral sketching out… Read More
Olio items: tape recorder, family photos, a facsimile cocktail napkin from the early 60s, and postcards from the Lars Johnson Archives. The character of Lou Keats started with a short story. There was a very particular memory that triggered a vignette about the realities of a small rural Alaskan town juxtaposed against the perceptions… Read More
Mom sharing stories with my brother. Juneau, Alaska early 1950s The earliest memories I possess have to do with words. Whispered. Sung. Spoken. It was serendipity to be born to two adventurers who also happened to be ardent storytellers. The images, sounds, scents that accompanied the earliest of these stories still… Read More
Of Memory and Place Fireweed Crossing is a fictional town. But it is so much more than that. To me, it is an amalgam of a dozen small towns and villages that were a part of my early life. Indelible impressions persist from each recalled encounter. And so a new place is born from… Read More
In that three AM corridor between the horrific dream that woke me up and the slow gurgle of the coffee maker outliving its warranty, I come face to face with the new story. And as with most of my efforts, the tale is never what I thought it was at the beginning. The linen clean… Read More
“Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand!” from E.B. White’s The Elements of Style found on page 65 of a well loved paperback. … Read More
Fellow Travelers: I wake up from the semi-hibernation of late December and realize January is well underway. On Friday the 4th, nearing midnight, a 7.5 earth shake rolls under the floorboards and sharpens childhood memories of the 1964 earthquake. Only my brother and I are still here, so I call him and we talk for two hours. I spend the rest of the next night writing.… Read More