Category Archives: David Feela

There is an executive director for strategic initiatives with the National Federation for the Blind. It may be that his job involves sitting quietly for hours in an office, thinking up initiatives, then deciding if they are strategic enough. I … Continue reading →

Often it starts with a trailer house on a couple acres and a reasonably rutted driveway running up to the house. Rather than grade, gravel, or pave the driveway, or get involved in the harder stuff, like landscaping the property, … Continue reading →

I love the season as it approaches summer, when daylight stretches luxuriously from horizon to horizon, never in a hurry. What I don’t care for is that adjustment we make twice a year, especially in the spring, when daylight savings … Continue reading →

I have half a mind to say nothing about the closure of 13 Arizona state parks, but then the other half of my mind insists that something be said about boarding up the old Riordan Mansion in Flagstaff. No other … Continue reading →

Recently I took a flight from the Albuquerque Sunport. Rather than use the hotel’s free shuttle, I walked to the airport, a distance of about four city blocks. I toted my own luggage — one carry-on suitcase with wheels. It … Continue reading →

A retired educator with whom I often take my mid-morning coffee break has been at the retirement business longer than me. Since 1983 he has been living off his investment, which has been generous enough to include the price of … Continue reading →

ºI should have written this book review when the book first appeared, not waited like I have until readers forgot about it, but 38 years late is probably better than never. Back in the early ’70s when I worked as … Continue reading →

A young mother told me she sat her baby down in front of the web camera, just after the baby had learned to sit, and tried to enroll her in a premier online preschool program. Because her daughter couldn’t complete … Continue reading →

The next time my birthday comes around, I’m going to claim I turned a year and half younger. When my income taxes are due, I’m planning to duplicate copies of my salary from 2002, explaining that for seven years my … Continue reading →

On the B-Lazy Ranch, the paperboy — still wearing his pajamas — boots up his computer and attaches his neighborhood route subscribers with a special command, then he pushes a button and crawls back into bed. Even before he has … Continue reading →

“By the time you reach the age of 35, you have the face you deserve.” – Everyone’s grandmother Facebook is an Internet phenomenon but despite its popularity, I’m still reluctant to join. Maybe it’s that old Groucho Marx sentiment, I wouldn’t … Continue reading →

We’d paid our vehicle entrance fee at a local Colorado state park and I prepared to unhook the trailer. It’s only a 13-foot Scamp, so I can lift the trailer by its tongue and push it around by hand. Of … Continue reading →

“It’s not so difficult to feel like a fool when you actually behave like one.” — from “Faintly Coherent” (a book I still intend to write) My mother marched the three of us into the doctor’s office and ordered us to behave. … Continue reading →

I had never seen a cairn the first time I hiked a trail in canyon country almost 30 years ago. In Minnesota where I was raised, if anyone planned to use rocks as markers they’d have painted them white and … Continue reading →

Worried a stranger had been secretly hanging around my house, maybe checking out the tools in my barn, or worse, peeking in my windows, I started double-checking my locks at night and watching surreptitiously after dark from an upstairs window. … Continue reading →

Roughly two years ago, a man of genius took an awkward fall, which amounted to his last bow, as he left the stage that Shakespeare has compared to this world. On April 11, 2007, this man exited without ever saying … Continue reading →

The sandhill crane is a very old bird, some 9 million years according to fossils unearthed in Nebraska, but I’m not such a bird brain as to drive to Nebraska in January just to say I’d seen the oldest crane. … Continue reading →

People are struggling to find a better way to survive these uncertain times. Some have put their faith in the president while others have embraced patience and a sense of history to see us beyond this crisis. I’d like to … Continue reading →

Here’s a bulletin, one that readers may realize is loaded. Militiamen and gun enthusiasts of Montezuma County have been stocking their arsenals, purchasing every available gun in the Four Corners since Barack Obama won the presidential election. Actually, it’s not … Continue reading →

I live on three acres just off the highway. All day the traffic. All day semis, pickup trucks, SUVs, sedans, sports cars, and motorcycles. The noise of living beside a highway, any highway, really. The noise is so much a … Continue reading →

One Thanksgiving Day – after the dinner hour – my wife and I prepared for a stroll, intending to wear off a rather generous stuffing of turkey. The neighbor’s dog watched us from the edge of his driveway as we … Continue reading →

I’ve got an acre crammed with thistles. I didn’t do anything to deserve them, and they didn’t do anything to deserve me. When I walk through my field to reach the irrigation gate, I can’t help but think of politics. … Continue reading →

I know how tragic it sounds, the last of anything. But this ending for me has a beginning, one that needs some explaining. It’s actually an end wrapped in a beginning, like a Mobius strip, a loop that drives you … Continue reading →

I took a quick glance to the left, then to the right as I pulled into the parking lot, looking for a convenient spot. Heat rippled off the tar on this hot summer afternoon, the air heavy with the sweat … Continue reading →

Proof that the camping spot had been used by others was clear, with a crumbled fire ring of charred stones as evidence of the location’s endurance and a collection of antique trash testifying to its relative isolation. I walked the … Continue reading →

We were shopping at a rather upscale thrift store on the way to Glenwood Springs. Our usual strategy to uncover the best thrift-store bargains is for Pam to scout out the housewares, appliances, knick-knacks, the clothing racks (both women’s and … Continue reading →

When John Denver wrote his song “Country Roads,” no doubt he had a rural vision, one where serpentine back roads wandered past farmhouses and barns, where a few cows and horses dappled a landscape of rolling hills and green meadows. … Continue reading →

Most people who believe in karma know that, like starlight, it often takes most of a lifetime to reach the individual who deserves it. Karma, for those of you who skipped the ’60s, is that quirky mystical approach to justice … Continue reading →

This year, Montezuma County could become the site for our next Winter Olympics; that is, if the world sporting community considers adding a new event called “Getting out of the driveway.” I have always admired a house set back a … Continue reading →

Some people complain when others talk trash. I hope I don’t offend any of them, because what I have to say is trash and more than likely unethical, immoral, and almost certainly illegal since it involves crossing state lines. We … Continue reading →

For Christmas, I got a Hooey Stick, a folk toy dating back to a time before the advent of electricity. The instructions required that I rub the notches on the first stick with the un-notched second stick and a propeller mounted to … Continue reading →

In 1906 O’Henry published a short story, “The Gift of the Magi,” about a couple that scrimped and saved to buy each other the perfect Christmas gift. The story’s end has a twist, because the woman cuts and sells her … Continue reading →

As election season draws near, I want to announce my candidacy, to put my own name forward, to nominate myself for a prestigious title: Poet Laureate of the Montezuma County Landfill. The truth of the matter is this: There are … Continue reading →

I went to the store to buy a replacement garden hose, because a fairly new but totally inept one had developed a leak. Of course, I know hoses are supposed to leak – from one end – but this hose … Continue reading →

I don’t expect much from the new fall television season, but I don’t mean I’m bereft of hope. I just mean I have enough experience with the medium to know it’s not well done. Sitcoms, soap operas, game, reality, and … Continue reading →

I wasn’t feeling so great, but I didn’t know how to describe what was wrong. I should have gone to the doctor, but with gas prices out of control, my medical co-pay doing the double whammy along with my monthly … Continue reading →

Many people in America watch “The Amazing Race,” a television program where teams of young wanna-be millionaires compete by solving puzzles and wasting a lot of fuel traveling to various exotic destinations across the globe. Supposedly, it’s an exciting show, … Continue reading →

Supposedly, an innocence exists in the natural world unparalleled by human beings. While society sits down to its usual seven-course meal of deadly sins, the animal kingdom receives its nourishment from some greater inner grace. Few creations loosed from the … Continue reading →

I put my uniform on, attach the ring of keys to my belt, then slip my photo ID lanyard over my head. I don’t wear a gun, and truthfully I wouldn’t want one, even if I was authorized to carry … Continue reading →

On the opening night for a new family movie at our local theater, we waited in line for our chance to purchase two tickets. We hoped for a good seat, close enough to the screen so we could judge how … Continue reading →