8 Comments

Shame is such a powerful force. It's terrible. And overcoming it is such a triumph. :)

Society loves to shame people. And it's so hard to be *weird*.

But screw that, I have three dates this weekend. ;)

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Oh, hah this is under my handle. This is Katie K. :D

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What an absolute delight to read your beautiful, evocative essay this morning. I have the same worries and wonders here in western KY—how will I manage the autumn of my life and I’ve never seen the woods so lush. Thank you for this lovely dispatch from your slice of heaven on earth. I hope you have a pleasant smokeless day.

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Oh my, thank you so much. Still smoky but lifting some, my guess is we're in for it on and off all summer.

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I would not be surprised, which is possibly the saddest statement, because I'm generally upbeat and curious, but the environment/climate is a whole other animal now.

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Oh, I'm reminded it was River Oaks neighborhood in Houston where we children played in those enormous yards while our parents attended to their inscrutable affairs..this, in the fifties.

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Wonderful essay!! You are one of the best writers I've encountered on substack and your dispatches from Livingston are much appreciated. I too remember a youth of privilege and country clubs, of parties at the governor's ranch. I also remember oil wells we owned and oil men and successful.drills and busts, of T Boone, and Chesapeake, and that scene that existed in the late mid century Southern Plains where I spent so much of my formative years. I remember River Oaks in Houston and Nichols Hills in OKC- It was a splendid life but a constrictive one and I couldn't wait to free myself and did. To Yellowstone in 1966 and thence to Berkeley and thence to the Army and back to Yellowstone again and again, woven into my life now-, a part of every year's cycle. I delight in your writing and your good good fortune, to liberate yourself, and help others, to live where and in the fashion you do. To have encountered the Dharma, onions, smoke and sourdough. To be a source of light in that smoke, in that blue shimmering Yellowstone air.

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Oh my heart. Thank you so much. Really, means the world to me ...

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