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.
I’m so happy to see The Piker Press today publish my photo of the Admiral David G. Farragut statue in Washington, D.C.’s Farragut Square. You can find the picture right here.
Farragut Square is a great place to stop and relax on a sunny day if you’re catching a train out of The District. It’s a couple of blocks from The White House — and there are plenty of food trucks with interesting fare. (You see, Virginians? Long Island is NOT the only place who has those.) DC residents can be surprisingly friendly too.
Thanks, as always, to Managing Editor Sand Pilarski for letting me be a part of the creative community of The Piker Press!
Was wondering who the hell “Susan Lilly” was.
Then I put my glasses on and saw that caller ID was just telling me “Scam Likely.”
Well … it WAS snowing in Roanoke a little while ago. And it was coming down pretty hard too. Then the sun came out and it vanished completely.
Campbell Avenue at Market Square.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 