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Grinning, I worked the levers and lowered my bucket. Drawing the teeth down and back, I chewed my first hole in the soil of Las Vegas, one of several I would dig over the next 90 minutes. Operating the 315CL Caterpillar Hydraulic Excavator at the Heavy Equipment Playground set me…
Read moreAs a child he witnessed magic. Among the spires of orange and russet rock, in the shadows of parapets ribboned with plum colored bands left by long receded seas, he watched as the Hopi medicine man placed the tip of an eagle feather against his mother’s neck and sang. His…
Read moreMy brother Curt and I were sitting in the dining room of the Little America Hotel in Flagstaff, AZ after our ski trip to Telluride when I said, “Look something up on your phone, will you? See if you can find out the steepest pitch a person can ski without…
Read moreSouthwest Texas is vast, and mostly empty. From San Antonio to El Paso, a distance of 550 miles, no town larger than 9,000 people exists. In the entire region, an area about the size of California, the population does not exceed that of Rhode Island. In the 1880s the region…
Read moreWhen I was eight, I saw a vision of my future. According to Argosy magazine, by the time I was thirty I would be getting around with a jet pack. I would be rocketing off to work with 500 pounds of thrust on my back. At night I would be…
Read moreIt was awful, one of the most disgraceful examples of urban blight imaginable. Block after block of gorgeous buildings gone to seed, paint peeling, plaster crumbling, porches sagging, weeds, filth and decay. And there on the porches impoverished retirees clinging to the last vestiges of life, sick, dying, tubes sticking…
Read moreWhen the squadron leader gave the signal, we hurried forward, crouching and firing, trying to get to an overturned cable spool where we could find cover. Or I should say they were firing, the other guys on my team. They were plugging away, spraying the field with ordinance, taking no…
Read moreClark Kent is resigning from the Daily Planet. Times have changed and Kent doesn’t appreciate the tabloid-like direction the paper is taking. He plans to become an independent journalist and blogger. Let me be the first to welcome him to the club. As earth shaking developments in the Superman saga…
Read moreThe United States today is a country of two different people, liberals and conservatives. The partisan divide is stark and dramatic. But at bottom what exactly is it that divides us? The best definition I’ve heard comes from libertarian essayist P.J. O’Rourke who said, “Conservatives fear the government more than…
Read moreSometime around 10:30am on the morning of Saturday, November 12th, 2011, a 24-year-old Danvers, Massachusetts man knocked on his neighbor’s door. When the neighbor opened the door, the man took the cat he was carrying under his arm and tossed it into the neighbor’s house. Startled, the neighbor asked him…
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Pilgrim’s Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier by Tom Kizzia
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The question of what to do when a child is lured into a cult is hard enough, but the issue becomes even more complicated when the cult is actually the child’s family and the cult leader is the child’s father. The complications deepen when the cult leader and his family are elevated to the status of a cause celebre by anti-government groups fighting the US Park Service in a remote corner of Alaska…
