New Orleans Telling my mother the news about my brother, Dale, waited for my return to the city, so now every day, she and I reestablish the facts of the matter, reconfirming his passing. Somehow this seems so metaphorically appropriate for Dale, he is both there, and not there, both known, and unknown, both voluble, witty, …
Category: Personal Writings
Oil Prices, Small Diners, and my Uncle Barton Wade Ratliff
Tulsa With the price of gas moving towards $2.50 per gallon in the oil and gas states of Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma, consumers are ecstatic, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is happy. State budgets and countless oil company deals are all built on the assumptions of what a barrel of sweet crude sells for …
Nicaragua for My Father
New Orleans My father, much missed, used to ask me whenever I returned from a country “new” to both of us not to tell him so much about what I had done, but what I had seen that would surprise or interest him. In many ways, Nicaragua surprised all of us from the Organizers’ Forum. …