Family History

Someone Good

I sometimes think about what the love of my life will be like. I never go anywhere where I might meet this overly-romanticized person — he’s entirely fictional. But in my head, the only place where this guy exists, he’s exceptional.

Mining Our Business

Some brief thoughts on mining and miners.

Granddad down in a mine,

me down in a cave —

both of us going deeper into Kentucky

Two Sturdy Branches : An Exploration of My Family Tree

A longform portrait of some distant (but beloved) ancestors.

a portrait of my distant (but beloved) Atlantic Creole and Andalusian ancestors

Bill

My granddad Bill worked in the forests, in the mines, in construction.

He hauled logs down the Ohio River. He helped build canals in Florida. When the family lived in the Keys, he built my father a treehouse overlooking the Gulf.

The Idyll

Aunt Ruby worked out in the fields, sharecropping during the Great Depression. Her husband insisted that one of their children was not his…

A Cowboy

My great-grandfather — my dad’s dad’s dad — saw himself as a cowboy. He was from Kentucky, but this wasn’t what caused his affinity for the wrangler lifestyle. He lived along the far western edge of Texas for a few years, just an hour away from New Mexico. He did a bit of this and bit of that. But the state…