Your Escape

I can't seem to write you a letter
I'm not sure what you need to hear
Seems I always tend to squander our time together
I want you to know how much I love you
I want to be a channel for God's love for you
I want to hold you and give you something to hold onto
I know you're lonely and alone,
but you're good and kind and valuable
So don't begin to fall apart or continue to look down
You are in God's hands
He will never let you go
Let Him be your home and your escape

Media elitite, Boutique, Limousine, Country-Club Conservatives who play populists on TV and the radio

I really wanted to stop posting other people's cartoons on my site, but every once in a while I come across one that is too good at pointing out the truth. I could write a thousand word rant about the hypocrisy of right wing Republicans when it comes to deficit spending, the National debt, and especially the reversal of the progressive tax structure in the last 30 years after it had grown our middle class so robustly for 50 years before that. Or how they LOVE to make taxes such a red herring issue to promote fear and agitate working class voters to act against their own self interests... or just let Horsey's masterful cartoon make the point for me.

Where am I going?

Where am I going
where have I been?

How am I doing
What can I when?

Don't know the difference
don't know what's right
I'll know what I knew
when all comes to light.

What am I showing
what have they seen?

Sure haven't been glowing
and won't till the end

There's too much inference
that's our whole plight-
We'll reap what we sow
but till then we all fight.

Mornings in March

To celebrate National Poetry Month, and my design overhaul of the ol blog here, I am posting some of my old poems this week. Some of these are from this year, others from as far away and long ago as high school. I don't claim to be a very good poet, but sometimes words can do what even drawing, painting, and photography can't. Here is my humble offering. Maybe you can relate to some of them. I call this section "Max Nix," German for "nothin' much," or a "whole lot of nothing." Enjoy.

---

In the mornings
in March
as I walk from my truck to my classroom door
I hear geese calling
and sometimes cattle braying

if it's not too cold and the breeze is from the South
I catch a faint scent of the cattle auction yard across town

I close my eyes and reach for the school door
and I can feel the dew
and smell the earth
and the grass feebly trying to come back to life after months of death under inches of ice and snow

And I wonder how it would sound to hear Garrison Keillor reading these words on his Writers' Almanack

but these words aren't the poem
the moment is the poem,
the geese and the cows and the prairie air

I'm not the poet, God is
and I thank Him for letting me live in Iowa
and work at a small school
in a small town
and live in an even smaller one

and I thank Him for the poem of the morning

Poetry is Painting

"Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen."
— Leonardo da Vinci

Chapter 2: Lost in Paradise

After high school, I attended the University of Missouri and majored in Journalism. I wasn't exactly a stellar student.

Upon graduation, I went to work for the Mailbu Canyon News for several years. Despite what most Americans imagine, Malibu is not the exactly a glamorous and glorious utopia. The Canyon News was not the most glamorous and glorious publication. It ranked third of four newspapers that served the city. It was published weekly and made most of it's revenue from advertisements for horse and automobile trades. I spent most of my time working on those ads and transcribing local police reports.

I've never been much of a beach person. At about five foot eight and two hundred and twenty pounds, I'll never be a surfer. Be that as is may, I didn't mind Malibu too much except for the fact that I shared a double-wide mobile home with two room mates in a neighborhood called Paradise Cove. This was the only way I could afford to live in Malibu. Otherwise I'd probably have had to rent an apartment somewhere like Van Nuys and then I'd never been able to afford to drive an hour to the Canon News office every day. Most people think that Paradise Cove would be a wonderful place to live, sheltered from the freeway and only a block from the beach. But most people weren't named James Garner. Paradise Cove was the location for the 1970's TV show, the Rockford Files. Detective Jim Rockford was played by actor James Garner. I didn't know this when I moves in, otherwise I would've used my first name when I signed the lease. I've gone by James ever since kindergarten because I was thought William was too embarrassing and my mother refused to let anyone call me Billy.

I was barely eking out a living. I Hated having neighbors give me grief about being James Garner living in Rockford's trailer court. And I hated living so close to Los Angeles. Plastic, caustic, crime-ridden, smog laden, Los Angeles. So, when I found an opportunity to become the editor of a small weekly in the Midwest, I decided to try something new. I was looking through an office copy of the California Newspaper Publisher Association's monthly paper and saw an ad for an editor of a small town newspaper, the Cedar Ridge Times.

While, I as I said, I wasn't exactly top of my class at MIZZOU, I was feeling pretty bad about being just a staff member at a third place weekly, especially having graduated from such a prestigious journalism school. I was excited about the opportunity to step up to a leadership role, even if it meant having to deal with snow and cold for part of the year. How hard could it be? Like I mentioned, Malibu isn't exactly Beverly Hills. I figured rural Iowa couldn't be too much different from the ranchers and strawberry farmers of North West L.A. County. I figured the West Coast was a culture shock coming from the nurturing arms of Columbia Missouri. Really, I had no idea of what culture was, let alone culture shock.

Hurry tree, hurry

The snow has finally melted,
the grass is starting to green,
Robins are hopping and mourning doves coo
I hear the laughter of children outside again
and the honks of geese are fading
I stop and notice that the trees are budding,
hurry tree, hurry
bring your blooms for Spring
and your leaves
for Summer
I notice a neighbor's daffodils
waking from their winter slumber
and look forward to the tulips
hurry Earth, hurry
bring your blooms for Spring
and your leaves
for Summer

Send me your News tips!

It's that time of year again. I'm talking with Brad Swenson, the Publisher of the Mapleton PRESS about how I can help as a community correspondent for the Charter Oak and Ricketts areas. You can help. Have you got any ideas for feature stories or personality interviews? Have you got an even on your calendar that you'd like me to cover or at least get some pictures of? Please send me an email and let me know ted.mallory-at-gmail.com

Remember that Charter Oak Achievement Days are coming up July 12-15. The PRESS is planning on runing their annual special edition July 23. Why not show your support by advertising in the Achievement Days Edition? Give me a call, or call the PRESS office and reserve your space today!

Brad tells me that they've got Joleen Schultz signed on to help cover our area too- especially once I go back to school next Fall. When in doubt, call Michelle Kane at the office in Mapleton :

Phone 712-881-1101
Fax 712 881 1330
mpress@longlines.com

Iowa Corn

During a lull at the track concession stand at the Boyer Valley Girl's Invitational, I experimented with the macro setting on my camera. Pretty fun, huh? Warm and buttery. You can see some pictures of my cheerleaders on my Cheer Coach's Blog. Watch the Mapleton PRESS , the Missouri Valley Times and the Dunlap Reporter in the next couple of weeks to see if they run any of my pictures of girls' track events.

Chapter 1: Call me 'Chief'

I've never really tried writing fiction before. But since I haven't been writing a weekly opinion/humor column anymore, I have been considering things to write. Most writers are always musing about writing the great American novel. I don't know that I'm up for that. But I do think it would be fun to experiment with short stories, sort of vignettes and character sketches.

You can read everything I have done all in one place at GoodReads, or by searching for just the Hometown NEWS posts on this blog.

Here's the obligatory disclaimer- all the characters here aren't strictly based on anyone or meant to libel or defame anyone, although, let's face it- several of them may be composites of people I've encountered. Since it's just for fun, don't expect there do be updates daily or even with any regularity- but I hope to add to it at least each week. We'll see.

And here are my impressions of a small Midwestern town from a transplant from the coast; What's bewildering, bewitching and unbelievable about being in a town under 600.


My name is William James Garner. I guess my mother wanted me to someday become a psychologist or a philosopher. Most people around here call me "Chief."

I grew up in Cave Creek, Arizona. Most of my life it had a population under 4,000. It was the ugly twin brother of a town called Carefree, of the Gordon Lightfoot song, "Carefree Highway."

But they don't call me "Chief" because I'm a Native American. My father was a large animal veterinarian who served clients in Carefree. My mother was a hostess at a highway diner right on the border between the towns.

Carefree was the posh, trendy tourist town full of boutiques and art galleries frequented by snow birds. Snow birds were affluent retirees from cold, flat places like Iowa, Nebraska, and Minnesota. Cave Creek was less friendly to outsiders and highly protected by it's natives. Cave Creek had hot air balloon festivals. Cave Creek had wet tee-shirt contests. Carefree had get-away ranches owned by Hollywood honchos like Lucille Ball and Dick Van Dyke. Cave Creek had ramshackle ranch style homes build by actual ranch hand who took care of the horses that the TV and movie stars rode once or twice a year. Carefree boasted a five star restaurant with seven course meals. Cave Creek had 'the Horny Toad and the satisfied frog,' a bar and grill that fed and watered weary cowboys and thirsty bikers.

When I was growing up, our towns were way out in the boonies, somewhere North of the Phoenix area and South of Dead Horse Gulch and Skunk Creek. For the last decade or so, Phoenix and it's more high brow suburb, Scottsdale have been in a race to see who could connect to the New Age mecca of Sedona first. Scottsdale has pretty much absorbed Care Free and Phoenix has all but swallowed Cave Creek. The Care Free Highway is little more than an expressway connecting State Highway 89 and I-17.

But this story isn't about where I'm from, originally. It's about where I am now.

Trying something new

I'm trying to make all of my blogs share a more consistent graphic style, so that they'll look more like they belong together and hopefully will eventually navigate more like they're all pages on the same website. Please be patient with me, but do please send me your feedback and tell me what you think.

I'm not sure I like the background color yet- or the entire color scheme for that matter. I may go with plain white or pale gray. I was hoping for sort of a desert thing. The previous work blue and international orange were derived from 1950's/early 60's American Airlines logos. This new look is based on more of a contemporary Southwestern taste. Partly from my home state of Arizona, with a little South Dakota prairie thrown in. I like the turquoise accent, but I'm still partial to that orange.

The tan background isn't quite as pleasant as I had hoped for. I'd really love to figure out some kind of graduated/variegated background, but I think that requires loading an image which will take more code writing than I'm up for and slow down page loading.

I'm hoping that the slightly more shallow masthead/banner will draw more attention to the content on each blog.

Let me know if you have an opinion or any suggestions. Hopefully I'll manage to standardize the layouts a little more and redesign the navigation buttons soon. Meanwhile, thank you for your patience.

My morning commute

This was the scene between Charter Oak and Dunlap, along HWY L59 this week. Eat your hearts out, big city dwellers