As is my custom, I have written up my reflections after my recent trip to the US. As I note at the end, this essay reflects more on how I have changed in the seven years since we fled the US after Trump was first elected than it does on how the United States has changed.

Here is an essay I’ve been working on lately. It is probably of interest only to my expat friends and others well versed in Spanish culture. It is long, but it does have lots of pictures.

I have now uploaded a revised version of this essay, with some new 19th century paintings. Anyone who has already slogged through this essay may only want to glance at the new pictures on pp. 16-20.

Not a particularly profound essay, but hopefully enjoyable

“Why don’t you write a short story about those old clothes hanging on that clothesline on the side of the abandoned building next door to us? They’ve been there untouched for the four years we have lived here,” my wife said to me the other day as I was moping around wondering what to do after I had just finished a major writing project about public art in Oviedo. So this is the result. It is a place-based story, and those who aren’t familiar with Oviedo, Spain and its history may find it a little confusing. (Not to mention the liberties I take with the first/third person omniscience.) It is a dark ghost story, and trigger warning: the story contains rape and suicide.

Here is a new silly thing I wrote this morning:

In recent weeks, I have facetiously been telling my friends that we really don’t have to worry about all the horrible things going on in the world right now, or worry about our aging bodies and all our aches and pains. Climate change is here, I would say, and the world as we know it is going to come to an end. And this got me thinking about Robert Frost’s 1923 poem “Fire and Ice” and thinking about an update. I’ve tried to keep to the same rhyming and metrical scheme (okay, one slant rhyme!), but, unlike Frost, I’m no real poet. But here it is:

Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice,” 1923

Some say the world will end in fire, 

Some say in ice.

For what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

————————————————

“An Update to Robert Frost, ‘Fire and Ice’,” 2024.

Some may try climate change to deny,

But it is here.

As we pump more carbon into the sky,

The temperature’s rising, we can’t deny.

The worst is coming, the end is near.

Droughts and floods, the forests burn,

Fire and ice, as Frosty feared.

We never learn

Oh dear, oh dear.

Not really poems, more just ideas inelegantly set to verse

Okay, most of this is a long quotation from the World Meteorological Organization website.

Here is a little short story I just wrote. It fits in with my obsession with time.

Back when I was teaching, I used to encourage my students to make use of em-dashes in their writing. Here is a silly poem about them.