Tag Archives: Virginia

Throwback Thursday: the 1994 Commencement Program for Mary Washington College.

Thanks to AluMeredith for the image.  🙂



Maybe he’s practicing for a garage band?

People are funny.  This is admittedly a terrible picture, but what you see is a nocturnal lone trombone player tonight in the parking level of Virginia Tech School of Medicine building (by Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital).

Hey, man — more power to you.  Practice your art wherever you can.



AMC Theaters in Crystal Spring, Virginia

A Barnes & Noble in Crystal Spring, Virginia

I didn’t even think a lot of large brick-and-mortar bookstores like this were still around any more.



Spring in Crystal Spring.

Roanoke, Virginia, April 2025.  Pictured is the First Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

No, I can not hold a phone or camera steady.  It will never happen.

(I am a bit of a flake …)

The heavily accented guy at the bodega cheerfully informs me that “NEW CEREAL SHIPMENT COMES *TOMORROW,* SIR!”

So evidently they know me as “that cereal guy.” Not sure how I feel about that.

[Update — now all my Facebook friends are cracking the various requisite “serial” jokes.  I should have seen that coming.]



I am now an organ donor.

Or … I will be, after I die.  That is how it works, right?

And you should be one too!  It’s easy if you live in a state like Virginia.  You just check off a box when you apply for (or renew) your driver’s license.

Or, you can find out how to register right here with the Department of Health and Human Services.



Image credit: pd4u, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

A few quick words on “Closing Arguments.”

I immensely enjoyed today’s matinee performance of Closing Arguments at The Bear Theater at 302 Campbell Avenue in Roanoke.  (A caveat — I cannot offer an unbiased review here, because a great old college friend, Russell Morgan, is one of the cast.)

But suffice to say I had a blast.  Closing Arguments is an engaging, thoughtful, and genuinely funny comedy delivered by a talented, energetic cast.  It portrays a dysfunctional family reuniting in a small town for a funeral for one of their own, where their latent animosities and neuroses boil over.

Writer and director David Walton was on hand to introduce the performance.  (And it occurs to me as a theater neophyte that there must be a benefit to playwrights directing their own plays — who better to guide actors performances toward matching the intent of the text?)

Anyway, I cheerfully recommend this.  Closing Arguments’ next weekend is its last; if you are interested, you can buy tickets here.



There is a new page here at the site for 2025 poetry publications.

And check out the photo there of a creepy tree out in Salem, Virginia.  Seriously, that thing is straight out of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves'” (1937) haunted forest.

Poetry, 2025



My poetry was translated into Chinese for a third time by the Poetry Hall quarterly bilingual journal.

Wonderful news!  Poetry Hall translated selections of my work into Chinese for a third time.  The quarterly bilingual journal printed my poems “Feast,” “Bumblebee,” and “she” in Issue 27, which you can order right here at Amazon.  The publication has a truly interesting format in that it features poems in both languages, side by side.

Poetry Hall is a not-for-profit journal that is published by the Chinese Poetry Association.  Its mission is to “introduce well-written Chinese and English poetry to the world in both its original language and translation forms. ”  It showcases work from contributors worldwide, and also has a global readership.