The highway from Tres Piedras to Taos is as straight as a string, both sides of the road densely populated by sagebrush and little else. The only sign of habitation, human or otherwise(after all, this IS New Mexico), is the occasional "Earth Ship" set way back in the scrub. Earthships are structures that resemble alien spacecraft, hobbit dwellings, or something you might envision in a Mad Max movie. Some use stacks of discarded tires in…

Dad here; Oba(mom's mom from North Carolina, flew in last week for Kats graduation, and will be staying at the Casa for the next couple of weeks. As an 82 year old Okinawan and a pack of rowdy dogs don't always coexist well, I have set up shop in Zach's old room, with Zach's old twin bed. The inmates see no reason to change sleeping companions, so I now am sharing my even more meager…

When I first snatched the smartphone from dad's incapable hands almost three years ago, my initial purpose was to update my fledgling family on my recovery from my time in the crate. It wasn't until shortly thereafter that I realized I had a message and a purpose; to do my part to counteract the mindless negativity and division that assaults us daily. There's no better feeling in the world than to feel needed, but at…

At the critical juncture where spine, legs, and tail meet, most dogs have "butts"; Ajax, Marco, Mia and I have DDU's, pronounced "doodoos", Dad Detection Units. These highly sensitive sensors are utilized to detect any motion in the land mass that is dad; we utilize them by pressing them firmly against the pater familius while we sleep to ensure that no egress from the bed is possible without our notification. That is, all except Marco,…

Charlie posted this some time back, and it seems especially appropriate again today, so at the risk of letting her see herself repeated in print and becoming insufferably big-headed(too late for THAT), here we go, from 2016. "Why then do you live, if you do not care to live well?" Diogenes was a philosopher of ancient Greece; one of his best known eccentricies was to wander the countryside with a lantern, looking for the last…

Dad here; it was August 29,1994 when I first walked into the Red Cross to give blood. One of the first things I remember was a bulletin board featurong Polaroid pictures of old men who had reached certain milestones in giving, 1 gallon, 5 gallons, even 10 gallons! I remember thinking, "these guys are old! I will never reach that level of giving!" We recently received word that the local branch of the Red Cross…