I was at first taken aback by my need to seek (sigh) bifocals. But that feeling was mitigated entirely by the return of … the world!! It is rendered in such exquisite detail — even things that are far away!! (I had no idea that I needed glasses so badly.)
Roanoke’s sweeping wooded vistas are once again completely novel to me. It’s beauty times two for a transplanted New Yorker. 🙂
Went looking for info on “A Bridge Too Far;” I somehow arrived at info for “Bridgerton,” and those are two very different viewing experiences.
Hey, it’s as good as anything else.
The local artist is John Murrill; I think this was completed last year.
My photo here is terribly cropped, but I just loved those tree branches at top and wanted to keep them.
Check out these awesome Christmas presents I received from some totally cool Roanoke friends — bookstands for displaying some of the publications that have featured my poems. 🙂
Also among the Yuletide goodies were an Irish coin and a piece of Connemara marble — ideal for setting up beside my copy of The Galway Review 12.
The picture below illustrates something that I still find novel about Southwest Virginia, simply because it is so different from the interminably flat landscape of my native Long Island. When viewed from a distance, mountainside buildings have the illusion of being at the level of treetops.
Those look like really nice townhouses, and they are indeed on level ground. (There is a road beyond them.) But their position at the top of that rise makes them seem a little bit like mountain fortresses to the kid in me.
That’s “Grey” for the BritBuds.
Nobody tell me if the name is already taken. If it is, I don’t want to know.
I know that “Gentleman Ghost” is an obscure DC Comics supervillain, and he can keep his schtick because, seriously, look at that guy.
And then there was Dark Horse Comics’ “Ghost” from my college years; she at least had a great sense of style.
But “The Gray Ghost” is mine. I declare it.
UPDATE –I did not know at the time that I wrote this that it was the moniker of a Confederate General! I will have to come up with another name.
This feels like a normal winter.
And normalcy, my friends, was not on my 2025 bingo card.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 