Get yer early bird specials on Kickstarter.
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By Zach Hively
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Writing a book is supposed to be a crowning achievement in a writer’s life. One must spend years, sometimes entire months, in deep contemplation, self-reflection, and total isolation in order to tease out the meaningful contributions to one’s life that brought one to the brink of a lifetime of royalty checks. Then, one must actually write the book.

But in my experience, the challenge of writing a book is mere marshmallow fluff compared to the heavy lifting of crafting the perfect book announcement.

The Book Announcement is where the skillful author introduces the Unifying Themes and Greater Purposes that Oprah will later discuss with him as part of her eventual presidential campaign tour. Within these few words, the author draws out the pending book’s key concepts by using an illustrative metaphor or some other spare literary device, so that future book groups can truncate their discussions and go straight to drinking wine.
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The trick for the author, of course, is to decide which illustrative metaphor he’s going to use, because he already put most of his good stories inside the book itself and, really, does the world need one more story about me evading encounters with bears?

Of course it does! But I don’t want to blow my bear-wad just yet. So instead, I’m writing the Book Announcement about a Life Decision that really fails to put those bear encounters in perspective.
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It begins, as many stories do, with the words “If my dad can ride his bike over those mountains, then it can’t be that hard.”

I had just moved to Durango, Colorado, to live off my leftover student loans. You would not recognize me then. You also would not recognize me now, unless we have met before. But I was a different person before saddling up for the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic eleven years ago. I had long been a dedicated indoorsman. As activities go, a weekly Uno night was more my cup of tea. Hell, cups of tea were my cup of tea.

The annual Iron Horse ride covers the fifty-mile stretch of highway between the mining and railroad towns of Durango and Silverton, while scaling a pair of ten-thousand-foot mountain passes and informally racing a steam locomotive. I had mounted a bicycle exactly twice since I was eight years old, and put the bike in actual motion only one of those times. But my dear father had participated in the Iron Horse ride for years, despite being, biologically speaking, old. And if Pops could do it, then so could I. I called him up and shared my resolution. He said, “You’re still young, dude. I think if you really put your mind to it, you can manage it. Definitely. Absolutely. No, really.”
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He tried to warn me about the little things, though. Things like sitting in the saddle for hours (puh-leeze! I was a veteran sitter) and leaving the house—on my bike!—for actual training rides. And, though it pains me now to admit it, I proved that you can forget how to ride a bicycle.
But I had an entry fee and paternal pride on the line. I had to accomplish this feat to disprove all the people who say millennials are lazy, worthless bums destroying America, even though I’m not sure what a millennial is, exactly, or if I am one. Besides, the experience of training for the ride might provide fodder for a future Book Announcement. So by gum, I rode my bike. I rode it even though I was not a genetically-endowed cyclist with sponsored clothing. I rode it even though my blood was not made of energy gel. I rode it even though it meant consuming protein bars with experimental seasonal flavors like “gingerbread” and “adventure.”

I still don’t know why so much riding was a key element of an efficient training regimen, exactly, other than it showed Pops that I was serious about this. He couldn’t understand why I had been an English major, but riding a bike, he got. And as we all know, future-President Oprah’s readers are suckers for a good father-son bonding story.

As I kept riding, I earned a fresh perspective on my new home from the seat of my thickening bum calluses. Bicycling isn’t really about the chain grease or the space-age food. It’s about communing with our wider environment. It’s about making sure I beat Pops across the finish line. And it’s about finalizing my growth as a human being by the time I was twenty-seven years old.

On the day of the Iron Horse, when I careened down the last mountain into Silverton, I emerged from the cocoon of early life and young adulthood into this blazing mega- butterfly you read today. No more youthful insecurities. No more “living and learning” or “emotional development.” If I could conquer mountains, then I was basically an expert on life.

I wrote my first installment for what became my Fool’s Gold column in order to commemorate my triumph. I soon branched out from bicycling to tackle the defining topics of our day, topics that required a specialized brand of maturity, insight, and a really poor sense of smell: gender and masculinity in the modern era, family holidays, other people’s dogs, finding friendship as a hermit who dislikes people, and so on and so forth.
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Then someone had the bright idea to rework those adventures into a book. That someone was me. You can call me Zach Hively, because that is my name. And I’d like to introduce you to my forthcoming book, now up for grabs on Kickstarter: Call Me Zach Hively Because That Is My Name.

For all these years, both of you, my darling readers, have had to wait weeks for my next column. Now there is no more waiting. In one extended bathroom visit, you can join me as I open my home to friends, apply to be a festival queen, and travel to St. Louis so you don’t have to. Each of these adventures improved me—enhanced me, even—like a radioactive spider bite. But even conquering mountains on a bicycle that weighs less than a hedonist’s guilt—even delivering a column (on deadline, mind you) for several years—did not quite prepare me for writing this Book Announcement.

No, that took actually sitting down (thanks, bicycle training!) and writing it. I’m happy that I could reward your time and, ideally, the full price you are about to pay with a guiding light by which to understand this book’s Unifying Themes and Greater Purposes. If you figure out what that light is, please let me know, so I can include it in future revised editions.

Here are the highlights of the Kickstart campaign that goes live today:

• Early bird special: Only through Sunday, you can pledge for an advance reader copy that will ship in May in addition to a signed paperback that will ship in September.
• Get your name in the book: All pledges of $5 and up get your name printed, for better or (more likely) for worse, in the book itself.
• Exclusive hardcover editions: The dust-jacketed hardcover edition of Call Me Zach Hively comes in a variant color, so you can really stand out as a sucker. For hardcover books, I mean. A sucker for hardcovers. Mmm, hardcovers. Once the Kickstarter campaign closes, that's it for this edition. Never again. Unless you find it on eBay. Save thousands and order it now.
• Ebooks and paperbacks and all sorts of bookish goodies. You can even inflict gift a book to a school or library.
• Plus, non-bookish goodies, including writing workshops, commencement speeches, and joining forces for a future Fool’s Gold column.

Thank you all for your support in reading my ongoing work and making this and other books possible. Love! Zach
Back Zach on Kickstarter
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Long live the Free Press!
​Zach Hively

You don’t need me to tell you that printed newspapers are, if not a dying industry, at least a much-reduced one. I mean, if cassette tapes are making a comeback, there’s some hope for newsprint yet. And of course there’s digital news. But actual newspapers—the kind that smudge your fingers black, the kind you can rest your cereal bowl on, the kind you start your fires with—they’re an endangered species.

Which really, really sucks.

That said, some of the best of what remains are what we loosely call “alternative newspapers.” The ones who look at what social media did to the news cycle (hint: waiting for tomorrow morning is too long) and said, “Oh, yeah? What if we make you wait AN ENTIRE WEEK?”

These papers (even if they’re online) are my bread and butter. Maybe because they understand the value of taking time to think about what you write before you publish it? Maybe because they’re desperate for content? Nobody knows. But my Fool’s Gold column (and so many other, more brilliant, columns) exists because of venues like the Abiquiú News and the Durango Telegraph.

And, until earlier this year, the Four Corners Free Press, who said: “I’ll see your once a week and raise you to ONCE A MONTH.”

The Free Press and its editor, Gail Binkly, took a chance on me back oh roundabout 2014, give or take, when yours truly was but a fledgling columnist with a part-time job processing business licenses and parking tickets. (Oh, the things people will write on their checks for parking fines; this might be a story for another day.)

Ten years in, and I rewarded their kindness by pushing my monthly deadline later and later and later. Is this what ultimately killed the Free Press? The world may never know, because Gail is too polite to say so.

But in celebration of all the Free Press stood for—actual long-form journalism, diverse opinions, and a ridiculous wealth of columnists, but most especially two entire spreads of tastefully annotated crime notes recounting just how many people had been banned from Walmart that month—some friends of the newspaper put together a party for Gail and crew. They assembled a booklet of farewells from those of us fortunate enough to see our names on the paper’s contributors list.

This was my contribution, which they mistakenly included in the final cut.

Ode to a NewspaperWhen you really stop to think about it, “expression” is such a strange word. We use it to mean “share our thoughts through writing, or interpretive dance, or inchoate screaming,” but really it means “to take what is inside of us and put it outside of us.” This can mean articulating our emotions. It can also mean relieving the pressure on our dogs’ anal glands.

Using the full spectrum of the term, I cannot truly express—at least not in words—what it means to have been published by Gail Binkly and the Four Corners Free Press a dozen, sometimes even ten, times a year, every year, for the past decade.

For starters, the fact that it took me so long to drive the Free Press into the ground is a testament to the resilience and delusion of the editorial staff. My Fool’s Gold column has buried at least two other independent news organizations, both within single-digit years, and neither of them even had print costs.

But more than that, Gail and the Free Press stood for integrity. Which is why it’s so incredible they kept nominating my column for legitimate journalism awards, as evidenced by my actually winning some of them. This has yet to turn into wealth or glamorous invites. But for this, I forgive everyone involved.

Here’s something heartfelt I can express, though, without the use of paper towels or latex gloves: The crime notes always made me feel better about myself.

Fill the void that your favorite newspapers have left in your heart: Subscribe to Zach Hively and Other Mishaps!

Zach’s Substack is free. The free stuff today will remain free tomorrow. Someday, he might offer additional stuff. Zach+, as it were. You can tell Zach that you value his work by pledging a future paid subscription to additional stuff. You won't be charged unless he enables payments, and he’ll give a heads-up beforehand.

Every year, we celebrate the day Dave Barry met me.

By Zach Hively

​They say you should never meet your idols, that they can’t possibly live up to your expectations of them—they’re just people, after all; people like you, with hopes and dreams and families and problems of their own, people who just want to get home as fast as possible because don’t we all deserve to go to the grocery store without complete strangers interrupting our attempts to remember what all was on the list we left stuck on the fridge? 

However, they never say the same thing about never meeting your adoring fans. You should always meet the people who idolize you. There’s nothing better for your ego than being recognized in public and having your picture taken by people you have never met before and probably will never meet again.

I know, because of that time I went out of my way to meet one man trying to make a go of it.
This was 2006. Actual printed newspapers were still a thing. Yet, while the writing was still on the paper, it was also on the wall—and one journalist, if you can call him that, saw it coming. Let’s call him “Dave” because that is his name. Dave had been writing absolutely, critically serious social commentary for the Miami Herald for more than twenty years, yet he had failed to receive any recognition more widespread than national syndication and a Pulitzer Prize and, I don’t know, a dozen or so books with names like Boogers Are My Beat. 

But, knowing that the newspaper and fire-starter industry as we knew it was on its way out—or maybe just because he was ready for something different—Dave retired his weekly column and set out to co-author a series of novels for younger readers. This was a bold career move, because it was predicated on the gamble that books were not going to follow newspapers into obsolescence. 
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You want to know why else this was a bold career move? Dave and his friend Ridley were not only writing books for younger readers; they were writing officially-sanctioned fanfiction. Specifically, prequels to the famous Peter Pan stories created by J. M. Barrie and Disney. 

You want to know why this was even bolder? The publishers decided that Dave, whose entire readership was in the United States, and Ridley should go to England to promote this book—the very same England where the original Peter Pan stories were set. This would be like you and your bar-buddy deciding to fly to Tatooine to reboot Star Wars, or like flying to Coruscant to reboot Star Wars. 

In short: Dave, brave though we can imagine him to be, might have been feeling just a little bit out of his element. We can suppose. We are not omniscient narrators here, and our legal counsel advises us not to presume to know his feelings. So we will continue to speculate, vaguely, and most definitely not definitively. 

This is where I come in. I had been aware of Dave’s work for some time. I had not reached out to him to voice my support—that can be unnerving to an author contemplating a career change, or any career at all. But I would (anonymously, of course) submit occasional wacky news entries for consideration to his blog. This was in the days before we writerly types were concerned with creating “content”: Dave’s blog, while it was indeed a content generator, served me much more as a procrastination device at the time, and I was happy to lend a hand.

It was on this very blog that Dave (or his assistant, judi with a lowercase j) announced that Dave and Ridley would be visiting the UK for a media tour for their first book, Peter and the Starcatchers. Lo and behold, I was in the UK too! I am a US American, and in my view, the entire UK is about the geographic space of Delaware. It didn’t matter where in the UK these two would be promoting their book. I could reach it from Norwich within half a day. We were practically in the same neighborhood.

So I reached out to judi to inquire how I might best lend my support to Dave. She wrote back (and I could tell she was barely containing her excitement at my inquiry) that this media tour was largely stopping at BBC radio programs for interviews, and there really weren’t any public events per se, because no one (well, one person) on the entire island knew who Dave was. 

But … there might be one opportunity, she said. Dave and Ridley were scheduled to sign stock at Harrods in London on St. Patrick’s Day. This was not a public reading, but if I went and asked around, it was possible some clerk might let me in the back room to say hello.
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Now, this meant I would have to wake up early (on St. Patrick’s Day, no less) and while everyone else on this college campus (not an exaggeration) would be drinking Guinness at 8 am (also not an exaggeration), I would have to catch a train to London and then find a cabbie who knew where this bookstore called Harrods was located. 
Worth it.​

So I did. The cabbie and I had a bit of talking at cross purposes when I arrived in London, me not knowing that Harrods was not in fact a bookstore and him not knowing that I was, in fact, in certain very small circles, famous. But we worked through our differences and he dropped me off at the most ridiculous department store I had ever seen. (Considering that my most ridiculous comparison was probably Coronado Mall in Albuquerque, this may say more about me than about Harrods—though Coronado Mall certainly lacks the equivalent of Princess Diana paraphernalia near the escalators.) 
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I navigated the labyrinth until stumbling into the bookish section, where I asked after Dave and Ridley, and the bookseller pointed me to a small table set up with small stacks of books and two very real flesh-and-blood men standing behind it with no one around.
This was not a stock signing after all. This was a public event. And were it not for me saving their faces, they would be signing to a whole lot of nobody.

I picked up three books and, playing it cool, asked the two men to sign them for me. (One of them looked vaguely like Dave’s one-inch-square syndicated headshot, which made me confident I was in the right place.) The first one was for a friend back home. The second was for my sister. 

The final book, I said, was for me.
“What’s your name?” Dave asked.

“Zach,” I said. (Had I known then, like I do now, that my forthcoming book would be called Call Me Zach Hively Because That Is My Name, I might have better utilized this moment for product placement purposes.)

Dave started to write in my copy of his book. Then he stopped, stone cold. “Wait,” he said. “Zach. Are you the Zach who judi was talking with?” 
“I am,” I said. 

“Zach!” he said, and he shook my hand with a great deal of warmth and vigor. “judi is not going to believe you came. I have to take your picture to prove that you’re real.”

Of course, I let him. It was the most gracious thing I could do, considering the moment. Dave’s “CrapCam” was legendary among his blog readers, and true to form, the resulting headshot was, indeed, pretty crappy. By this point, one other person had wandered into the book room, and by all appearances had decided to buy a book to rescue these poor American authors from the even weirder American pinning them to their station. You can see her in my CrapCam photo.

But we had made a connection, Dave and me—and we conversed enthusiastically for several minutes about, oh, you know, this and that. It would be rude of me to spill.
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Eventually, he finished signing my book. “For Zach, my personal idol,” he wrote—thus providing me with the best future book blurb I would ever not be able to use, because my legal counsel advises me not to without Dave’s explicit permission.

I felt we could have talked all day. Part of me wanted to make all Dave’s and Ridley’s UK dreams come true by inviting them out for a Guinness—if we were very lucky, the pubs would still have the grotesquely large fuzzy Guinness hats, on which you could pin a button for every pint you consumed—but I also felt, as the celebrity, it was my best course of action to make a clean exit, so these two fine men would not feel any pressure to alter their media tour for the day.
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So we shook hands again, and I let Dave and Ridley sign the other person’s book, and I wound my way back to a return train to Norwich. 

That could be the end of that. But this is why you should always meet your idolizers: they just might inspire you in return. 

Several years later, I embarked on my own serious journalism career, writing serious social commentary for very serious newspapers (one of the very few still in print!) and websites. I dropped Dave and judi one more email—and why not—just to thank them for that day in Harrods and the inspiration it provided me for my own bold, reckless, even senseless career trajectory. 

“Congrats!” Dave wrote back. “Your Fellow Humor Professional, Dave.”

Dave is not dead yet, yet still his inspiration lives on in me—for better or (more likely) for worse. My forthcoming book, Call Me Zach Hively Because That Is My Name, compiles several years of my award-winning Fool’s Gold column, available in one place and with a legitimate cover for the first time. 

The publisher, Casa Urraca Press, is launching the book on Kickstarter in April. (You can sign up now to be notified the moment it goes live—giving you the best shot at early-bird access to advance reader copies.) ​

Other rewards include exclusive hardcover editions, giving books to libraries in support of (or to the detriment of) literacy, and joining me in cahoots for a Fool’s Gold column. 
After all, it’s readers like you who make our dreams come true. Maybe someday, some of you can be my personal idols.
Thanks for reading Zach Hively and Other Mishaps! Subscribe for free to receive new weekly posts (including Fool’s Gold and poetry) and thereby support my work.

By Jessica Rath

When I saw the announcement in the Abiquiú News about Ryan Dominguez performing at the Abiquiú Inn, it released a flood of memories. Several lifetimes ago, I was a volunteer with the Abiquiú Volunteer Fire Department, as were Ryan and his wife Jeanette. For a few years, our service time overlapped. The fire station was still in a rickety, small building above the village; the new station at the current site was still under construction.
 
I had no idea that Ryan was a musician, that he played the guitar and other instruments. It’s strange, isn’t it – we regularly see people at meetings and events, but we know next to nothing about them. I wanted to remedy this and asked Ryan for an interview, to which he kindly agreed.
 
Ryan grew up in Abiquiú, he had eleven siblings and was the youngest. He joined the military in 1992, and when he returned from service he went to school and got a degree in Fine Arts, and another degree in Criminal Justice. Two diametrically opposite subject matters, at least in my eyes! How did this come about, I asked him?
 
“I'd rather use what I really love to do as a hobby. And then get a job to support me and my family. I play and I draw; it's more of a hobby for me”, he told me. Well, that makes sense; it’s not easy to make a living as a young artist. Having to worry about making enough money can take the fun out of one’s creative striving. Keeping the artistic work separate from one’s professional career certainly holds the stress-level down.

Over 30 years ago, Ryan met his wife, Jeanette, in Espanola. They went on a date and have been together ever since. They have a daughter and two grandchildren, a granddaughter who is sixteen and a grandson who is nine years old. Artistic talent runs in the family: both his daughter and his granddaughter have beautiful voices. Jeanette and Ryan sing in the church choir. And their grandson takes regular drawing lessons from Ryan, because that’s what he’s passionate about; he wants to learn how to draw.
 
But first of all, I want to know more about  music and guitar-playing. How did this come about?
 “When I grew up in Abiquiú, there was nothing to do here, especially for a young person. So it was really boring for me here. There was nothing to do. But there was a guitar in the house, and my mom told me to pick it up and learn how to play it when  I was bored. ‘I don't want to hear that you're bored – if you're bored, pick up the guitar and learn’ – that’s what she told me. So I started playing the guitar, and then I joined the choir when I was eight years old. I was playing guitar in the church choir.”
 
“That's how I started off,  and I play other instruments. I play the piano. Another guitar-like instrument I play is called the Charango. It has ten strings. It almost sounds like a mandolin”.
I had never heard of the Charango, so I looked it up. 

It is an instrument belonging to traditional Andean folk music and highly celebrated in South America. Close in size to a ukulele, its sound is similar to a classic guitar or a mandolin. It dates back to the 16th century! Maybe Ryan will bring his charango along when he performs at the Abiquiú Inn. I’m sure people would love to see it.
 
“I play the guitar, the piano, and a number of other  instruments. When I was much younger, I used to play in different bands. I was the lead guitarist for many bands here in Northern New Mexico, playing New Mexico style, country, oldies, and rock  music. This  became a little boring, because I played it all the time. I was actually looking for more of a challenge. When I was taking classes at the college, I took a flamenco guitar class and that's when I was hooked. I started playing, and then teaching; I still teach guitar. Now that I'm older, I just play as a soloist, I play at different venues. I do private parties, special events, restaurants, weddings – things like that”.

Flamenco! I had just read that it had been added to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, a part of UNESCO. It’s a contemporary and traditional musical style associated with southern Spain, especially Andalusia. 

“Flamenco is a type of music that’s not played very often in northern New Mexico. There's a northern New Mexican style of music which doesn't include the Spanish guitar type. I just wanted something different. I wanted to do something completely different, something that not very many people are doing. And a lot of people are unable to do it, because it takes so much practice. And so, after many years of experience I’m able to play that style of music”.
 
“I call my style Spanish Guitar, it is all different Latin-based music. So it can be music from Mexico, or it can be from South America, from New Mexico, from Spain.  I also play many Latin based rhythms. And always with a nylon string acoustic or acoustic/electric guitar. When I played with bands I used a steel string electric guitar. I went from big stages to more intimate settings. I like what I do now. I know my music. I can do whatever I want to do with my music, because it's just me. I don't have to get a consensus with the band, so I have more freedom now”.

Most of it is self-taught.

“When I was in third grade, at the age of eight, I took my first guitar class. I learned a few chords and a few rhythms, and after that, I  just practiced and learned whatever I could.” 
 
“It's interesting; now there is YouTube, right? You can learn almost anything on YouTube. But back then, I used to have to listen to a cassette tape, listen to it, learn it, rewind the cassette tape, listen to it again, until I learned what I wanted to learn. It was a lot more work back then to learn”.
​
Indeed. Many young people today don’t have any idea what a cassette tape is. It belongs with rotary phones, VHS tapes, and incandescent light bulbs: some of us grew up with it, but it has been replaced by something more modern. The pace of these replacements seems to be accelerating.

 “Right now I just play gigs, and usually I get referred to by word of mouth. So, if I play at the Inn, they'll post it in the Abiquiu News or at the Inn. I don't advertise much about myself because I think if people have heard me, they will refer me to others by  word of mouth.Then you know that whoever hires you, really wants you because they have heard that you do a great job. And so they appreciate that as do I”. 
 
 “And here’s another thing about my music: you may know  the song I'm playing, but I'm always making it my own. I don't play like anybody else. And if you hear me play a song tonight, and I play the same song tomorrow, it's going to sound different because it's all dependent on my mood. Depending on my mood I can adjust to what I'm playing and it's never the same. Even if you've heard the song three times, it's never going to be the same because it's just what I'm feeling that night, what I decided to do with the music”.

“I also try to set a mood, I can make you feel a certain way, just by the way I play. I can put you in a different mood. I can make you feel excited, I can make you feel calm. I can make you feel sad, or I can make you feel happy – just depending on how I'm feeling. I try to pick up on the vibes of the people that are in the room. My first songs are pretty much just normal. I listen and then, depending on what I feel in the restaurant or at the event that I'm playing, it'll drive me to play in a certain style”.
 
 
Ryan plans to make a CD of Spanish music because there are only a few here. One can hear examples of  Spanish music, but the performers are  people from Spain. Ryan wants to add music that’s performed by someone who actually lives in New Mexico. 
 
 “The guitar is my passion but I also do hyperrealism drawings.  I'll show you something really quickly” –  and shows me a large pencil drawing of an elephant, amazingly intricate and detailed. And then he shows me another drawing,  this one  is a shark.  It's not done yet, but it’ll be a shark in the  ocean, underwater. Both are totally beautiful.  I had no idea that Ryan was so talented. How long does it take to finish one drawing, how many hours, I ask him.

“The elephant took me about eight total hours. And that's with an hour here, and an hour there. I teach  my grandson how to draw. I go to his house, usually every week, and I teach him how to draw because he really wants to learn. And that’s what I love: I try to teach the youth. If they want to learn drawing, I'll show them different techniques, because I want to be able to pass on something. This is also true with the music I teach”. 
 
I can’t wait to hear Ryan play at the Abiquiú Inn. He creates his music anew every time he plays, and there is an intuitive interchange with the audience. What a captivating and delightful experience.

Now with a scary Greek word!
By Zach Hively
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​Have you noticed how some sensory experiences escape language?
​
We try. Heaven help us, we try—to put words to things that escape words. Think colors: yellow and orange are warm, purple is more cool. Red is roses, and blue (somehow) is violet. But white is both ridiculously hot and frozen solid. And to a person without sight, how does any of this mean anything?

Food’s another. So good, we say. Delicious. Scrummy. Yum. Because unless you want to lift highfalootin’ vocabulary from a sommelier, we can’t describe the experience of tasting food except by reference to other things we’ve tasted, or smelled, or felt.

Yes—technically, this is all of language. Every word is an abstract expression that we all agree means more or less the same thing, within that language itself. We use meaningless sounds or movements or symbols to mean something else in existence. Some things, we kind of generally more or less seem to agree on, mostly. Practical things. Tangible things.
Not things like music.

Which brings me to this poem. I had a really inspired idea a while back for a poetry project, all relating to music. This would be something fun, and lighthearted, a break from my usual fun and lighthearted work.
​
But eff me, writing about the experience of music is hard.

There’s a scary Greek word for writing poetry about art: ekphrasis, or ekphrastic poetry. Pretty typically, this kind of writing is a poem about a painting, or a sculpture. I’m choosing to expand it to music, most particularly the experience of listening to live music. (“Live music is better!”)
All this to say: you think, because you love something, it will be easy to talk about. But you tell me: what does a guitar sound like? Use your words.

I wonder, in fact, if this is part of why I have turned to more formal styles of poetry throughout this project—haiku especially, but also forms like the sonnet. I typically write in free verse, which my process lends itself well to. But there’s something comforting, reassuring, about the structure of a formal poetic style. It takes away my options, gives me the choices that fit the mold, makes me play within the bounds.

It’s unfamiliar terrain. It’s chewed at me for much longer than I anticipated. And this is the first piece to go forth into the world. Enjoy.

Antwerp, 2009 We stood outside an hour to claim the rail —our station: face guitars that turn stage right— the lights ducked down, and right away I knew your torch flamed sharp, intense, too much to keep contained in glass, in flesh—such fire prevails, chews through a life like piñons in the night: the driest fuel burns clean burns keen burns through itself til nothing's left, no heat to seep into my bones, fool bones that gently wail for steady warmth and for a constant light. Now fully I expect to read the news you've died tonight, burned out, forced rust to sleep. And if you do, this is the way to go: turned loud, laid bare, no embers left to glow.

Thanks for reading Zach Hively and Other Mishaps! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

By Sara Wright​

We know from fossilized records that the Sandhill Cranes are one of oldest birds in the world, and have been in their present form for 10, 30, or 60 million years (depending on the source). They have apparently maintained a family and community structure that allows them to live together peacefully and migrate by the thousands along Nebraska’s central flyway twice a year.
Sandhill Cranes mate for life, and in the spring the adults engage in a complex “dance” with one another. During mating, pairs vocalize in a behavior known as "unison calling." They throw their heads back and unleash a passionate duet—an extended litany of coordinated song. Cranes also dance, run, leap high in the air and otherwise cavort around—not only during mating, but all year long (Even young birds dance and throw sticks and grasses into the air while jumping around enthusiastically).

In their northern habitat, the female lays two eggs a year in thick protected areas at the edge of reed filled marshes. Before nesting these birds “paint” their gray feathers with dull brown reeds and mud to reduce the possibility of being seen by a predator. Born a couple of days a part, the second chick rarely survives. The remaing fuzzy youngster that might make it through the first year stays with its parents for about three years before reaching sexual maturity and striking out on its own, but even then the adult stays within the parameters of its extended family, and it is these families that comprise the flocks of cranes that we see flying together. During migration, a multitude of these families travel together by the hundreds or thousands. There are no leaders and often it is possible to observe what looks like an unorganized random flock (but isn’t) or diagonal thread made up of cranes flying (up to thousands of feet) above the ground.
 
In every watery roosting place there are a few cranes that remain awake all night alerting their relatives to would be predators, and in fact I have been awakened during the night by crane warning cries that sound quite frantic and are higher pitched than normal. I think it’s significant that these very ancient birds have survived so long in their present form. Could it be because they understand the value of living in community, perhaps acting as models for humans who, for the most part, seem to have forgotten what genuine community might consist of? 
 
Most recently these birds have been a presence in my life since last November when they first arrived, I believed for a brief stopover, before moving south to places like the Bosque del Apache to spend the winter.
 
When I first came to New Mexico almost three years ago I was astonished and bewildered by their haunting collective cries even when I couldn’t see them which was most of the time during the same fall month…
 
This year the cranes not only stopped by but many decided to spend the winter here much to my great joy, perhaps a result of Climate Change which is shifting their migration patterns and created conditions like the extreme drought that dramatically lowered the level of Red Willow River over this last year.
 
My hypothesis is that the resulting shallow riffles (one of which just happens to be below my house) provided many cranes with the safety they needed to roost there all winter long. For three precious months I listened with awe and wonder to pre-dawn crane murmuring and on sunny mornings watched huge flocks of cranes take to the air with their haunting br-rilling cries. Every night I stood outside to listen to that same contented collective murmuring just before dark as the cranes settled in for the night.
 
When they are all talking to one another during the day (cranes need to be in constant contact with each other/family members) it is hard to distinguish one voice from another because listening to the whole is a symphonic masterpiece. But this winter I slowly learned to identity various cries by listening carefully to smaller groups as they took to the sky. The highest pitched voices belong to the youngsters, the lowest and most full-bodied calls come from the males, and the females speak in tongues from the middle.
 
Sandhill Cranes are omnivores and feed in wet meadows or in shallow marshes where plants grow out of the water during the warmer seasons. They prefer a diet of seeds and cultivated grains but also include berries, tubers, crayfish, frogs, small mammals, worms and insects. In the field next to me I think they fed on wild sunflower seeds and native grasses.
 
As previously mentioned Climate Change is shifting migration patterns. Some groups are now spending their entire lives in one place like Florida (these are endangered), others are no longer migrating further south than Tennessee, although they also fly north in the spring. It is unusual to have Cranes living in Northern New Mexico, although I understand from local fishermen that a few have occasionally remained here throughout the winter. I recently learned that Sandhill Cranes have even been observed in parts of Maine.
 
Their normal migration routes take them from Mexico as far northwest as (eastern) Siberia, into the Canadian Shield and Alaska to breed with one major stopover in Nebraska at the Platte River where 600,000 cranes meet to rest themselves for a month before making the last leg of their arduous and dangerous seasonal journey (another group that settles further northeast makes a stop in Mississippi). In the fall all northern populations will make the trip south for the winter because of inclement weather and lack of food, stopping again to rest and feed at the same places.

​New Mexico and Texas have the dubious distinction of being the first states to legalize Crane slaughter and now every state along their central flyway except Nebraska engages in spring and fall hunting. We can thank the state Fish and Wildlife organizations for “managing” the crane population by issuing licenses to kill these magnificent birds to bring in even more money when these organizations are already extremely well supported financially by the NRA and our taxpayer dollars. A Caveat to those that don’t know: All State Fish and Wildlife agencies, that purport to support wildlife have a deadly hidden agenda: to kill birds and animals at their discretion.
 
Although at present these birds appear to be maintaining a stable population the low survival rate of even one chick a year alerts us to the fact that uncertain survival rates and delayed reproduction factor into the difficulties inherent in crane conservation, and to that we must now add Climate Change – the ultimate unknown. It is prudent to recall that by conservative estimates we have already lost 50 percent of our non – human species.
 
When I first began to hear the Cranes I never imagined that I would start to see them or watch them make gracious descents into a neighboring field at all times of the day, every day for months. Watching them cup their six - foot wings, drop their long legs and spread their tails as they parachuted to the ground is a gift that I have never taken for granted. A solitary musical rolling rill, a haunting cry that raises the hair on my arms is a sound that now lives on in my mind and body.
 
Spring migration has begun and the largest aggregations of cranes are moving north. Some days the bowl of blue sky feels too empty, but some small flocks are still visible especially during the early morning and again at dusk. I noted the sudden loss of the largest flocks just before this last full moon and wondered if these birds also migrated at night. Further research confirmed that Sandhill Cranes sometimes do migrate after dark during the week before and after full moons.
 
A few days ago the Core of Engineers opened the dam raising the river - the protected riffles below my house disappeared, so during this last week in February I am without the morning joy of listening to nearby pre-dawn murmuring, but can still see and hear some Cranes flying by.  According to my friend Barbara R. some flocks are still at the Bosque del Apache, so hopefully we will be hearing their haunting cries as these last Cranes fly northward. It isn’t until April that all Sandhills reach the Platte River …
 
Pueblo people say that humans were once Cranes who lived in the clouds… they came to earth and danced for joy in the rain… Cranes also watched over ceremonies and remain a part of some Indigenous rituals today.  Additionally, Sandhills act as Guardians for the People easing transitions from life to death and beyond….
 
Cranes are Elders in every sense of the word, ancient relatives and they continue on, some adapting, others following scripts or patterns that stretch back to antiquity. The way they live, migrating out of seasonal necessity, returning to home - places, celebrating through community and song in life and death is a way of being that embodies flowing like a river… And for that, their magnificent beauty and inherent wisdom, I thank them.

​

After Sheila’s passing in 1998, Sam met the second love of his life, Isabel Ewing. They were married in May 1999. In 2002 they serendipitously found their next home in Abiquiu, a small farm along the Chama River. In Santa Fe and Abiquiu, NM, Sam and Isabel have been active supporters of the Santa Fe Opera, the Boys and Girls Clubs Del Norte, the New Mexico Democratic Party, among other community endeavors, and Sam worked tirelessly to build and support the Abiquiu Volunteer Fire Department.

​Sam and Isabel loved life at La Joya de Chama (their name for their farm) where they entertained many friends and family. Sam loved cutting his 10 acres of alfalfa and timothy hay on his John Deere tractor, caring for his fruit trees and wine grapes, making wine, dabbling in woodworking, and sharing life with numerous farm animals and family pets. Sam and Isabel loved traveling together for family, fishing, friends, and great food starting with their honeymoon in the South of France, and over the years fly fishing and adventuring to British Columbia and Quebec, Canada, Belize, Italy, among other destinations. At the age of 80, Sam was pleasantly surprised by how much he loved a trip Isabel organized for them together to South Africa. In 2019 Sam and Isabel enjoyed a cruise on the Danube River with their children, nieces and nephew.
 
Sam was a life-long fly fisher and shared this passion with all of their six grandchildren. He was a believer in democracy, diversity, and inclusion both in nature and society. He was a devoted husband, father, grandfather, community leader and loyal friend. He had a radiant smile, beautiful singing voice, and a tremendously generous nature. He was a role model and mentor to many and a believer in creating positive change. ​

Bye Sam
 
I met Sam about 12 years ago. Our friends, Ton & Ans talked about them, saying we had to meet them. Eventually we did. The first time I met Sam, I was talking about some rodents digging holes by my house, I thought they were moles. He said, no, they were probably gophers. He told me the Latin name of gophers, then got a book and looked it up. Sure enough, he had the Latin name right, and the description of the annoying pest in my yard.
 
Dr. Jewell had a PhD, though you might never have known that. He was a Wildlife Biologist. He was taught by his parents to give back to his community, and he did that big time in Abiquiu, with the volunteer fire department.
 
Sam taught me to fly fish, and to tie flies. While I do neither well, I hope to get better at it. Sam was a father figure to me in some ways, but a friend in all ways. I will miss him.

~ Brian

By Jessica Rath

​​Ever since Georgia O’Keeffe settled here, the area around Abiquiú with its gorgeous rock formations and glorious colors has attracted a steady stream of visual artists whose paintings, photographs, and other artistic expressions capture its beauty and share it with the world. But there is also a rich legacy of oral history which would be all but forgotten unless somebody would collect the stories and write them down. Luckily, award-winning author Lesley Poling-Kempes did just that: she conducted countless interviews, researched numerous historical records, and collected photographs from the early 20th century. In 1997, she published Valley of Shining Stone, the Story of Abiquiú – a book that examines the history (and present time) of the area from many different angles. Legends, written history, and local families’ personal memories form a multy-faceted kaleidoscope. New to the area and planning to stay? This book will deepen your appreciation for Abiquiú and its surroundings.
 
I wanted to learn more about Lesley, her life and her work, and she kindly agreed to an interview.

Lesley grew up in Westchester County, New York. During her childhood the family spent many summer vacations at Ghost Ranch; her father came from El Paso and liked the Southwest.  When she was in college, her parents moved to New Mexico.

She would soon follow; when working at Ghost Ranch on their college staff she decided that New Mexico would become her home. She transferred from Wooster College in Ohio to the University of New Mexico, and that's where she graduated.

At Ghost Ranch she met her future husband, Jim Kempes. After graduating from Penn State, Jim started the ceramics program at the ranch which he led for 33 years. They both loved the ranch and Abiquiú and stayed and made it their home. They've lived in the Abiquiú community for more than four decades – longer than most Anglos I’ve met. They raised their children here and both their son and daughter went to Abiquiu Elementary.

“The Abiquiú area has been home for almost all of my adult life”, Lesley declared.

The following interview has been edited and condensed. My questions are in bold, to facilitate the reading experience.

Lesley’s father, Dr. David Poling, also was a writer who published at least ten books.

Did this influence her writing career, I wanted to know.

“Well he didn’t write full time; because of his profession (he was a Presbyterian minister and journalist) he only wrote part time. I did always make up stories, I really loved that. And so, when I went to the University of New Mexico, I went into the journalism department.  Tony Hillerman was its chairman, and there were only about 50 students. It was a pretty wonderful way to be introduced to writing. Tony wrote both fiction and nonfiction, and he was very personable. He was a grand teacher, and not all great writers are great teachers. He was a great teacher, a mentor. So I ended up writing stories for the rest of my life, both real and imagined”. 
 
“Do you have a preference for non-fiction versus fiction, or vice-versa?”

“I thought I was more interested in fiction when I started out. But Hillerman said to me, ‘You don't have to do either-or, you know.’ And that was kind of a revelation to me, and a relief”.

“When I first lived in Abiquiu I was writing fiction. But I also worked at New Mexico Magazine, which, of course, is nonfiction. I was right out of college and would commute into Santa Fe to work. But first I thought I would write fiction. And then my first book, which was about the Harvey Girls – this group of women who worked along the Santa Fe Railway – sort of fell into my lap. This was nonfiction, of course, and it involved about 80 interviews with people from all over the Southwest. I didn't realize it at the time, but that's how I have since worked – researched and collected primary information when I write nonfiction books. I did this with The Harvey Girls, and I did it again with Valley of Shining Stone, interviewing my neighbors. I had been here about 20 years when I wrote that book. And the book on Ghost Ranch was the same. And with Ladies of the Canyons, those women were not alive, obviously, so the primary sources were a little more removed than interviews. But either way, I just ended up telling stories, as well as writing novels”.
 
How do you find your topics and the necessary material?

“You know, I'm never really sure when I start a project whether it's a book or maybe just a magazine article. Actually, I've been lucky with the topics that I've chosen: there was always more material than I thought I would find.  Once I started digging and asking, there were far more stories and revelations than I had anticipated”.

“And then I go through a period of being overwhelmed and I stop researching because it becomes too big. For my last book, Ladies of the Canyons, I knew beforehand that the material was there. When I finished the book on Ghost Ranch, I knew about the women and their stories, but I didn't have time to tell it in the Ghost Ranch book. So I waited several years to go back and start digging into that”.

“And even then, when I began to look into the story of Carol Stanley who founded Ghost Ranch, I didn't realize that she was part of a league of women friends, and the amazing stories I would find. So that took me by surprise: it was such a big and wonderful topic. It was the most fun of all the nonfiction I've done”.

“People love talking about the Ladies. The book covered both local history of New Mexico as well as a lot of the national history of that time. It was simply fun to uncover, although it was hard to organize that much material. I didn't know this when I started. So I think it's just persistence. Intuition often plays a part, you get this sense that there's more to that nugget than you knew when you started”.

This sounds like hard work but also very rewarding.

“Yes, it is rewarding when the stories come together. In most cases, including the Abiquiu book, the stories begin to dovetail. And they make more sense once they are woven together. They begin to fit together, some piece from one story forty years apart from another story. It's an “AHA" kind of moment: NOW I understand why that happened to that person at that place”.


“I have to trust this process because I can go weeks and months where I just really wonder if this is making sense. If what I'm following and reading about and pursuing is important. You know, once in a while it's not and the material is just kind of background for my education!”

“But having done this now for so many years, the one thing I do have is the experience of getting through it. I know that if I just keep persisting with the material, the story will reveal itself and come together – out of a lot of chaos”.
 
Do you also teach writing?

I teach an informal Zoom writing workshop.  It started probably in 2010 or 2011 and used to be in-person in Abiquiu, before the pandemic. It has been ongoing ever since then, with people coming and going, but there is a core of people that have remained. They're very accomplished and committed writers, several of them have published, and they're a good support network for one another. I really enjoy facilitating that”.

“Everybody has a different process, yours may be different from mine and different from someone else's. But there's commonality too.  For example, some people outline and some people don't outline at all. People have different schedules that they stick to, and it's about finding the one that works for you. It's not universal by any means.”
“For me, it's three to four hours of writing every day.  That’s a lot of time to be in front of a screen. Three to four hours of focused, creative work; that is a good day of work”.
“I think that, maybe with some exceptions, most writers become writers because they work at it.  I don't think it's just a natural skill that you're born with. It takes time and attention and focus”. 
 
How has the development of technology influenced your work? Because 30 years ago, there wasn't even a computer, right?

“That's right. I was actually writing the Harvey Girls book in the 80s when I got my first computer. It was a revelation! I could cut and paste selections before it was printed!  Before, you had to type it out and physically cut paper apart. The computer was wonderful. It was like the Space Age for writers.”

”I think the biggest change for me, and I noticed it the most with Ladies of the Canyons and the work I'm doing now, is the internet. So many libraries and archives have digitized their collections and put them online. Where before I might have to go to the University of Austin to find a particular person's archive, now, most of it is digitized. The archivists can ask me, Is this what you want to see? Then they’ll scan it and send it to me as a digital file. It saves so much time and money. I know right away that the document exists, whereas before I would physically have to visit those archives, and pull out the drawer of material and start going through it. So that's really big”.

“Now you can find most photographs on the internet, even if they're 100 years old. You can find out who owns them and how to get permission for use without having to go to that archive. Even just 15 years ago that wasn't possible”.

So what are your projects right now? What are you working on?

“I can talk about it generally.  I have the finished sequel to my novel Bone Horses; that novel is done and I hope it will have a publisher soon. I'm working on a new book of nonfiction: it's about Santa Fe and northern New Mexico, around World War One. It's a big topic which I started during the pandemic. We were in such a difficult time. It was disturbing, the politics of the world, and then we had the pandemic.  I wondered how the creative people in Santa Fe survived the time of World War One: they had a pandemic, too, and the war was really awful, it just tore up the world, and there was a lot of suffering and horror. And there was TB, and many ill people were coming to New Mexico”.

“So there was a lot that could really squash creativity, and yet it didn't.  I just started reading their stories to find out how they (artists, writers, archaeologists who came to Santa Fe) survived such hard times. It was educational and it was comforting too, kind of a guidebook. So that grew into the project that I'm working on now”.

I will certainly be looking forward to this book; I feel we can use all the comfort we can get presently. My sincere thanks to Ms. Poling-Kempes for making the time to talk to me.