I woke up to my community in despair on Saturday. A letter to the editor in the local paper, the paper where I work at as a reporter, was causing a stir.
The letter, which many people have spread, can be seen below in the screenshot from the Scotts Bluff County Democrats. It is full of hate and ignorance. Its words make me want to leave this town, but I have spent two days thinking about where to go from here.
Far too many people are caught up in speculation about the end of the world. While we are doing a good job at ignoring actual climate change, the hurricanes currently ravaging parts of Earth are not the end of the world, nor do they have anything to do with Jesus Christ, the book of Revelation, or any other such nonsense. Yet, in a letter to the editor to the Star-Herald, a reader thinks that is exactly what is happening.
The road wasn’t as busy as I had thought it would be at 5 a.m. I suppose it’s because several people traveled up to agate Fossil Beds National Monument the night before and many more came later in the day.
About 10 miles before the park, cars, trucks and RVs dotted the sides of the road. They were all out of state vehicles. Most were pulled off the road and parked against fences. The fences are to keep livestock in. It doesn’t mean it’s free land to park your car or pitch your tent. But they did so anyway.
It angered me in a way. It’s great that people travel from places far away to see an eclipse at a great site, but disrespecting others and their land rubs me the wrong way.
Later in the day, I heard one gentleman say, “We’re so far out in the middle of nowhere, the owners, if there even are any, probably wouldn’t have seen us anyway.”
I was wearing my Star-Herald polo shirt and I was working. I chose to let that comment go. I also didn’t want it to ruin my day.
I turned into the park. The rangers smiled as they saw me. My day was already better. This is a photo essay of my day. I wrote two stories for the Star-Herald, took more than 700 photographs, met some new people, and experienced a phenomenal event.
If I were a cow, this would be me. Going where I’m not supposed to go to get something good. A part of the herd, but apart from the heard.
Life is very difficult for me right now. And I don’t use the word “very” often.
After returning from a short vacation to visit my mom and not seeing everyone in my family that I wanted to, I have been working. Literally. It’s all I have done. I returned from vacation on June 27. I have had five days off since then. I can feel it. Something inside is about to break.
A pricker bush at Winding Hills Park in Montgomery, New York.
When I left New York at 18 in 1988, I was off to college, but I was also searching for a place to fit in.
As I walk in the lush greenness, the familiarity of Middletown, it is not my home. It’s the place where I grew up, the town that shaped who I am today, but it’s not a place where I fit in.
Something happened to my family in the years that I’ve been gone. They’re more conservative. More entrenched in what they are doing. More easily shaped by the words spewed forth on the television or by their friends and neighbors.
They’ve got the car, the house, the kids, the white picket fence, the stability. But none of that was anything I ever pursued. And yet, there’s that non-spoken condemnation and the looks because I chose a different path.
On any given Sunday, the movie theater was where you used to be able to find me. Cinemas 6 in the Caldor Plaza was about a mile’s walk from home. It eventually expanded to become Cinemas 9. My friend, Doug, and I would spend the day there, arriving for the first show around 11 a.m., and leaving after the last, near midnight.
Before going, a plot was made of each movie and which theater it was in or the time listing from the newspaper was torn out and kept in my pocket. As each movie ended, we walked with the exiting crowd, slipping into the next open theater.
Employees and management didn’t seem to mind. We didn’t cause trouble. If we were loud and disruptive, we’d be kicked out.
Cinders stares off into the distance.
Sometimes the purring wakes me up.
It’s 4:30 a.m. Without opening my eyes, I can feel her head nuzzled on my collar bone. She’s only partially awake, but I must disturb her so I can begin my day.
Like clockwork, she comes near me at 7:20 a.m. She extends her left paw toward me for head scratchings and belly rubs before I head out the door.
Everybody wants to be somebody and, once, I was. For a little while.
The girls from Love two and three walked down to the Cather-Pound-Neihardt dining hall together. It wasn’t an unusual sight. Whoever was around at dinner time would eat together. Sometimes, they would hang out and wait in the TV lounge until a few people had gathered. Tonight, however, was different.
Fuck life. Fuck adulthood. Fuck being responsible. Fuck you if you hand handle a four letter word. No one asked you to read this fucking tirade.
Fuck diabetes and the fucking bullshit that goes with it. Fuck needles. Fuck insulin. Fuck half the paycheck that goes to keeping me the fuck alive. Fuck eating healthy and still being fucked over by the gene pool. Fuck never being able to eat anything unhealthy or risk the five fucking days it takes to recover. Fuck everyone who makes fun of you for the things you eat. Fuck the daily exercise that results in zero weight loss after three years. Why the fuck am I even trying?
A ladybug on my windshield.
A ladybug was on my windshield when I left work today
she clung to the glass as I pulled away
After a few blocks
she gingerly moved a few millimeters
By the time I got home
she was swiftly moving toward the edge of the windshield
Then she scurried to the wiper
and rested underneath
protecting herself
from the frequent Nebraska wind
Written on 31 October 2015
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