I turned 70 last week, and as though to honor my age, the evenings grow cool. I sit on my porch with coffee in the morning and need a sweater; over a glass of cold water or wine in the evening, I throw a shawl around my shoulders. The sun still warms the daytime air, but as darkness gathers, we open our windows for the freshness of the .moonlit air.

In a month, my seven-year anniversary as the backdesk of a California estate planning firm dawns. A month after that, I celebrate eight years to the day that my house arrived in the California Delta. On the heels of that November date crowds the anniversary of my own arrival in late December of 2017. Though it would be another twelve months before my habitation turned permanent and full-time, I will mark those eight years over a tiny Christmas tree in the Delta winds.

My emotions vary as I contemplate my metamorphosis into a California dreamer. I like the weather and the progressive politics although my little pocket here leans Libertarian. Knowing that if I get a day off, I can drive to the ocean comforts me. I do not miss the sweltering heat of a Midwestern summer, with its disregard for the turn of a calendar’s page. But posts on social media remind me of First Fridays in the Kansas City art district. I linger over the photographs before reminding myself of the richness of the art collective that we created in the small town near my rural community. Resourcefulness might not be my middle name but we claim distant cousinhood.

A recent reorganization of my tiny bedroom gave me a chance to declutter anew. Inspired by the gift of an antique chest, the project took two of us to orchestrate and three weeks to complete. In searching the boxes that had been stored for my entire tenure here, I gasped time and time again at new discoveries. One entire box held publications from my early writing life — magazines and newspaper articles in which my by-line testified to my early aspirations. I understand how the detour occurred. I push regret away. Yet still: Finding an entire manuscript of a novel that I wrote more than twenty years ago thrilled me. It had been stowed in a box under a yellowing copy of a magazine in which my first, and only, published poems appeared.

As summer draws to its inevitable end, I also muddled through the day that would have been my mother’s 99th birthday. Someone asked me how she died. I gave my usual answer: Medical malpractice. The questioner did not probe further. If she had, I would have explained that my mother presented with symptoms that turned out to be uterine cancer. Her doctor prescribed hormones, treating her with the disdain that medicine reserves for post-menopausal women. Even in the day, even forty years ago, the state of medical arts included the certain knowledge that pharmaceutical estrogen caused uterine cancer to metasticize. Whereas ninety-percent of women with such cancers could survive, my mother died within eleven months. She did not see her fifty-ninth birthday, or my thirtieth. I honored us both with a party to raise money for the local public library and could not have been more proud.

Summer’s wane triggers my customary nostalgia tinged with mild melancholy. I miss my son, my sister, and my friends. I miss my hundred-year-old bungalow. I long for autumn leaves and bonfires in black trash barrels at the end of cul-de-sacs following Dumpster Day in the neighborhood. From time to time, I wonder if I miss a life that never existed. Then I crack open another stored box and photographs spill on the floor. I kneel down and lift one after the other. My eyes grow misty. That world did exist, and I did matriculate along its splendid contours. When someone asks me why I left, I typically dismiss the question with a shrug. It’s a long story, I tell them. It would take a lot of alcohol to navigate the whole account. We leave it.

In my tiny bedroom, just before sleep, after I turn out the light and silence the phone, I ponder my life’s journey. From the first essay for which I received $5.00 to expound upon “God as An It” to the publication of my essay collection in 2022, I have always and ever been a writer. I’ve been a daughter, a lawyer, a wife, and a mother to greater or lesser success. My tendency to record my thoughts never stopped. Where some struggle to string ten words into a sentence and ten sentences into a paragraph, I bargain with myself to staunch the flow long enough to tend life’s obligations. Possibly those other roles suffered for my unrelenting focus on the printed page. If so, I hope I have now acquitted myself with sufficient glory to qualify for redemption.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

Summer’s End, by John Prine (whose death stands as one of the greatest losses of the early pandemic)

Until I moved to California, I had drifted through years of discontent without being fully aware. Now, here, in this place, my need for permanence has revealed itself. Yet I live in a house on wheels, the most insubstantial of dwellings, on a lot that I do not own, below sea level on acreage that has seen levees savaged by the rushing waters, the unrelenting rage of fire and earthquakes, and the battering ram of the perennial fierce winds. Still, I crave the solid home that I sold seven years ago to make start the odyssey of my last decades.

When duties abate, however brief the window, I head to the ocean. My river home comforts me, but the Pacific’s voice lures me westward. I cannot camp, or hike, or kayak but I can drive. My car takes me from spot to spot, places that I have visited often enough to have my own memories. Seven years slipped away before I realized the full impact of my move to the Delta.

The Russian River hits the sea just south of Jenner, flowing under the Coastal Highway a half mile south of there. A restaurant sits above the River near the intersection of Highway 116. When I first moved to California, a Russian Club occupied the spot. During the pandemic, you could stop for bootleg tea and sit outside. The silent, somber waitstaff took your cash and brought steaming pots of fragrant brew. Warm eyes squinting over masks signified welcome, even as everyone tacitly acknowledged that none of us should be there.

Now the place has become relentlessly cheerful, sporting a big sign promising real food. The menu clarifies that you’ve come to Jilly’s Roadhouse, where you can get a hamburger, mac-and-cheese, and a few other items that most folks would find hearty, even delectable. I sat by the window and studied the river, before ordering lemonade and the only thing that I could vaguely consider eating, a beet salad with candied walnuts, hold the cheese, and please make sure that the nuts do not have honey. The waitress checked; in an earnest tone, she assured me of my general safety. She placed a plate of sourdough bread and a ramekin of onion jam next to my salad, and quietly withdrew, leaving me to my book and my solemn gaze downriver.

In my first year as a Californian, that half year when I had one foot on the banks of the Missouri still, I drove this way and found myself on a flooded road behind a mudslide. On this Sunday, in mid-August of my seventh year as a California resident, I drove the same route after lunch, heading inland. I studied the stretch of green to the south of the roadway and wondering if 2018’s terrifying floods had enriched the soil. My car filled with the heady fragrance of summer, pine needles, rich earth, and ripening stone fruit. I thought I might be right; I spied a tree that stood in water that day, as I sat in traffic watching roadcrews shovel silt.

Driving home last weekend, I passed through towns clustered on the river’s edge. I pulled into each turn-out as I headed east to let a cluster of impatient cars rush past. I stopped only once, to wander through a roadside sale in Guerneville. There I declined to pay fifty dollars for a brass box that its seller touted as a vintage stamp-roll holder. I guess she took me for an easier mark than I actually proved to be. A patchwork jumper tempted me until I saw its rayon content. I do not need to own anything that requires special care. I considered it, though; before remembering that I only have 21 inches of hanging space already jam-packed with dresses. Surely I did not need another one. No one sees the dozen which I already own with sufficient frequency to spark familiarity.

Miles of two-lane blacktop fell behind me as my vehicle made its way back to the banks of yet another California waterway. I pulled into the park not long before twilight. I tarried, as I nearly always do, listening to the metal of my engine cool. Warm sunlight filled the western sky, spreading its orange glow on the billowing clouds. Hours and days loomed before me, moments when inevitable choices between happiness and gloom would present themselves. A twinge in my chest reminded me of the approaching fortieth anniversary of my mother’s death. Unanswered emails and unopened texts foretold of other obligations, some pleasant, some daunting. Eventually I made my way onto the stairs of my porch, backpack slung over my left shoulder. One Sunday in between barely suffices to restore my flagging soul. I made the best of it, though, then came back home, to the tiny house called Angel’s Haven, where worries and wonder waited beside each other in the gathering gloom of a summer’s night.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

Suddenly my feed shimmers with 50th anniversary tributes to A Chorus Line and I find myself overcome with sobs. The past wraps itself around me and I stand in the breakfast room of my mother’s home, begging with her. I am eight; I am ten; I am twelve. The argument repeats itself. I beg. She shakes her head. I cry. She turns away.

I cannot remember the first moment that I wanted to be a dancer but I can remember the hours that I spent in the sunroom leaping across the floor. Each time, I ended in a heap near the sliding door closet and one of my brothers laughed. When Mother got home from work she would find me huddled on my bed, face jammed into the pillow. I might have cried myself to sleep in a calmer household. Most often, I would be clutching the book about dancers that she had given me, stories of Maria Tallchief and Isadora Duncan. The ink on the pages smeared beneath my tears. Eventually, Mother convinced me that crippled girls could not be ballerinas and I stopped talking about my dream.

I sat in front of the computer tonight watching clip after clip of the flash mob in Lincoln Center performing One and What I did for Love. I remembered my vinyl copy of the Broadway show. I played it so many times that the cardboard wore thin and the album would slip through the outer edge onto the rug if I didn’t take care. I closed my eyes and sang with her, the young woman who did not regret what she did for love. Eventually that number became an anthem for every mistake I made along the way. Fifty years later, I will still sing the damn song to myself, in the shower or as I drive away from any failed encounter.

Overhead, birds softly serenade the breeze the cools them and the last light of the day’s sun that has warmed us all. Behind the trellis walls that my friend Michelle built for me, I sit among the succulents and the bougainvillea. I should be straightening the clutter beneath my laundry unit, the chore I had assigned for the evening. Instead I find myself playing version after version of the anniversary flash mob, taken from various cell phone vantage points in the brightness of a New York summer day. I strain to remember if I ever saw a stage production. Certainly I watched the movie, first in a theatre and many times on tape, at home, in one apartment or another, usually after a particularly nasty break-up — though come to think of it, weren’t they all?

If my life had a soundtrack, it would include songs from the musicals to which my mother introduced me. From Carnival‘s “Who Can I Be?” to “Who Can I Turn To?” from The Roar of the Greasepaint. But none encapsulates the roller coaster of longing and emotion that marred my six decades like the bittersweet and sometimes glorious tunes from the heart-wrenching tale of young people trying to make it on Broadway. My mother was right to steer me instead to academic pursuits. She could not have known that nothing would ever take the place of my unending desire to stand in the wings, wearing tights and silk toe shoes, waiting for my cue.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

The late morning sky spans overhead. White tendrils trail across the pale blue. I close my eyes and feel my chest rise and fall with each ragged breath. Saturday spans empty and quiet around me, the stillness broken from time to time by a passing car or a suddenly loud note on the speaker outside the shop. I change the song when discordant chords might disturb the neighbors who live over my shop.

I don’t recognize most of the songs playing on the bland channel that I’ve selected. I designed it to draw attention to the business but not offend anyone. As a consequence, the melodies frequently succumb to the noise of a truck on Main Street. The voices rise and fall with little flair. Once in a while, I desperately switch to something with pizzazz and wait to see if anyone notices.

Yesterday my friend Michelle and I drove to nearby Flag City to find good Indian food. We sat in a new cafe that occupies a storefront adjacent to the Starbucks drive-through lane of a little strip mall. Flag City has the best gas prices, a MacDonald’s, a dead Burger King that looks to be reinventing itself as some other chain, and a cluster of businesses. Halfway between Rio Vista and Lodi, its main purposes seems to be as refueling for semis headed to LA via Highway 5.

I ordered pakora and aloo gobi. The aroma took me back to the old Chai Shai just down from my traditional house in Kansas City. Homesickness overwhelmed me as I spooned perfectly cooked rice onto my plate beside the steaming potato dish. For the thousandth time I try to remember why I thought this adventure made sense. When I meet people, they ask why I moved to California. I demure.

The Pacific Ocean drew me, I do not say. I used to speak of my love for the ocean’s song. Every month saw me parked in a lay-by staring at the sea. Now my seven-day span includes three days behind the helm of the dream that I manifested here in Isleton and I do not yet see the fair trade. But I surround myself each weekend with beautiful, sometimes provocative art, and something must be said for the pleasure of that.

I took Michelle home to Isleton after our dinner, driving back into her property amongst the rusty John Deeres and the bits and bobs of a farming life. Wind ruffled the tall grasses in the neighbor’s meadow. As I turned my car towards home, I glanced to my right and caught the fierce glow of a majestic sunset streaming through the clouds above the Sacramento River. A few minutes later, I pulled to the side of the road, first right outside of the town of Isleton, and then on the Delta Loop where I keep my house. I rolled down my window and held my phone outside, angling its lens westward at the ball of fire on the far horizon.

One of the weirdest parts of a wild personal transformation in your sixties involves the human phenomenon of adolescence. In 2017, I began the process of divesting myself of a life that I had spent three decades building. I started the phase-out of my law practice, sold my house, traded my mother-in-law’s Prius for RAV4, bargained a bunch of cash on a tiny house, and headed west. As I sat in the open gateway of a vineyard near the confluence of the San Joaquin and the Sacramento watching the blazing descent of the sun, I could not prevent myself from questioning the last seven years. I’m feeling my teenage years as a revolution. I have no idea what might come next. The crash-and-burn could rival the evening’s glorious sunset, or I could rise from the nourishing soil of the California Delta in a graceful sweep of gold like the eastern light of a cloudless summer morning.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

The merest of gestures can shatter self-respect. A hand raised against comment; a slight shake of the head. A sardonic grin. Your voice falls on resistant ears. You tell yourself in turns that you deserve better and that you deserve much worse. Your greedy heart wrestles with a crushed soul that huddles in the unlit corner.

Before I moved to California, I got a pedicure every other week at a salon near my home. I can’t recall the name of the technician who provided this service for me but the same woman waited on me every time because I had a regular appointment. Getting this done did not feed my vanity. My particular mobility challenge inhibits certain acts of self-care; I understand how important one’s feet can be to heart-health, but I also acknowledge that a pedicure provides a certain sense of satisfaction.

Within weeks after I moved, I realized that I would have to find a new salon. Although I could count on being home a few times during that first year, once I finished my cases, I would have no need for frequent visits. With the trepidation of one who firmly believes in her unworthiness for such luxuries, I booked an appointment in Lodi and presented myself for scrutiny.

It did not go well.

The lady bent over my feet and exclaimed in unbridled tones that she did not wish to work on a crippled person. In truth, my ten toes have a few knots and gnarls, mostly the unfortunate result of a spastic gait and hard, unyielding shoes. As I struggled to get out of the chair, a woman approached the area and tried to intervene. Eventually, I let myself be persuaded to stay and the nail tech decided to do the pedicure.

Needless to say, I never returned. I tried another place in town to similar ends, although the woman bending over me took my feet in hand to treat without much fanfare. She voiced her complaints in obvious disgust but in a language that I could not understand and over her shoulders to a co-worker, gesturing to her basin and my offending digits. I never went back there, either. I have spent the intervening years tending to my own feet as well as possible, given my limitations. As for my spirit, it seeks other means of solace.

This week, I have come to St. Louis to see family. Yesterday my son spent several hours helping my sister, and I chose to find a nail salon at which to treat myself to a little pampering. The woman to whom I had been assigned gently lifted my feet into the tub of warm and bubbling water. She smiled and nodded, seemingly not versant in my native tongue just as I had no knowledge of hers. For the next hour, that woman — whose name I never learned — restored both my feet and a small but crucial corner of my psyche. She smiled, and nodded, and even gently drew my socks over my ten toes when the pale pink polish had dried.

As I sat outside waiting for my son, I closed my eyes and let the warm rays of the afternoon light kiss the fragile skin across my aging cheek bones. Later, my son, my sister, our friend Penny, and I shared a meal at a nearby pub. On the way home, I glanced westward, at the blazing sunset. I wiggled my toes inside my shoes, and felt a slight stirring of contentment. It cannot last; it doesn’t stand a chance against the onslaught of trouble in my small corner of the even more chaotic world. But in that moment I could savor its deliciousness, and so I did, all the way home to our Airbnb.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

You might notice a vague shimmer in the center of the sunset. I edited out a roof-top on a building in the bottom of the original photo. The image is otherwise unchanged from how my cell phone saw it last evening.

Sitting in the shop which I manage on the weekend, I watch the few cars move down Main Street, wondering what it all means. The sky spans across the town of Isleton, pale and clear. A few customers have wandered from wherever they thought they were going to the coffee shop next door and then to our place, mostly for the restroom. The library lady came to restock the sale books; a couple of artists brought new work. Mostly I have passed the time thinking about my old neighbor George, who died yesterday.

I almost missed the announcement because I never knew George’s surname. Specifically I did not realize that he didn’t share a last name with his mother and her husband, with whom George lived in a rig at our park and, later, in a neighboring park just a few miles away. The bracelets and tumblers that his mother sells in the shop rise above the sightline of shelves, reminding me that I should send a note. I texted; I donated to the fundraiser for his services. Otherwise, my acknowledgment of his death has been limited to a brief conversation with the man who works our office on the weekends, who knew a bit about what happened.

Grief weighs heavy on my shoulders when the tragedy strikes close to home but I never know what to do with secondhand sorrow. I have no claim to mourning attire, or special consideration. I did not know him that well. Yet for the last seven years, I could count on seeing him a couple of times a month, at community events or just sitting on someone’s deck. He would wave as I drove past. If we found ourselves within speaking distance, we would exchange casual conversation. He offered to carry anything heavy that I needed brought from my car. If I had cold water, I would share with him and he thanked me in simple, kind terms. Otherwise, all I knew about George came from his mother, who spoke of him in the special, uncritical language that we boy mothers reserve for our sons.

Yet I have unshakeable recollection of George as kind, undemanding, and unfailingly considerate. When the situation seem to warrant, I would offer him a few dollars for his help and he always refused it. At our markets, he would accept a lunch coupon if I had one to spare. Yet in a heartbeat, he would rise from his chair and extend his hands to take any burden with which he saw me struggling. I never heard the details of his life before my acquaintance with him. As far as I know, he was, and will always remain, the beloved son of my friend, a smiling face, a quiet presence.

The social media post described him as a son, a father, a brother, and a friend. I can attest to his virtues in two of those roles. If he performed the others with as much grace, he will indeed be missed.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

Many moons ago, before I started funneling all of my disposable income into a new business, I traveled west nearly every month. Sometimes I got a bed in a hostel. Often I would take a small oceanside motel room. I usually left work early on Thursday and stayed late on Sunday, until going home could only be the last next option. I walked on the bluffs; I drove to the old Russian fort north of Jenner and sat at the farthest end of land on a metal bench. Waves crashed against the rocks; terns, gulls, and pelicans glided on the air around me. I kept my phone silent. I ate sandwiches and threw the crumbs for the seabirds to catch. Ships glided across the horizon and I imagined myself as a stowaway.

At the end of each sojourn, I would tell the Pacific goodbye as I turned inland. I promised my unending fidelity to her worship at the highest point in the arc of the Bay Bridge. It seems silly now, but I those weekends seemed like small visits to a sacred muse. They sustained me.

Now I find myself in yet another barely accessible hotel in Palo Alto, a few miles from where I will have blood drawn in the morning for the casual entertainment of an earnest oncologist who finds my continued improvement delightfully remarkable. I plan to submit for an extra vial or two that the folks in ID went in order to evaluate my status from their perspective. Between the lab visit and the yearly bond with hematology I get to break my fast, and I intend to enjoy the adventure.

The type of leukemia which dances on a couple of chains of my DNA evolves slowly and has already tarried so long that I will likely die with it, not from it. Last Sunday, I met a mother and her two teenage daughters who live with the loss of a seven-year-old who did not fare as well. Her name was Gianni, and each of them, the bereaved mother and Gianni’s big sisters, wore butterfly pendants in her memory. They gently sifted through the rack of bracelets to find three in Gianni’s favorite color as I stood by and suppressed tears of secondhand sorrow to which I really have no fair claim.

Years ago I participated in a huge lawsuit with far-reaching implications and a dozen or so attorneys. We held a conference call to hammer out discovery and scheduling disputes. The conversation got a little heated and one of the attorneys snapped, threatening to ask the court to fine me for what he perceived to be remission in cooperation. I sighed. “Counselor,” I began in reply. “I have been shot at, run over, assaulted, robbed, and left hiding in a corner fearing for my life. I think I can handle a motion for sanctions.”

That is almost a verbatim quote, except I have substituted the word “assault” for what I actually said. I spoke the truth, and that was thirty years ago. Since then, I have endured much more, and, worse, watched others struggle with burdens that I could not take from them. But standing in my shop on Sunday, listening to that woman talk of her child not dead six months of a vicious form of a disease with which I will have only a passing interlude, I would gladly have endured it all again tenfold to change the little girl’s fate.

Someone once scolded me for remarking that compared with many, my life has been tolerable, even privileged. He vouchsafed that i should have suffered less and rested more; that luxury ought to have found me. I could only shake my head. Now here I am, within reach of the voice of my beloved sea. How could I ever complain? My problems might irritate me; some nights certainly find me awake and cursing the constant pain. I have known loss. Yet no bombs fall on my village. A pleasant waitress brought amazing food to my table this evening. Tomorrow I will receive excellent medical care at a phenomenal clinic, and I will drive the long way home so that I can take the heady fragrance of the Pacific into my tired lungs, nourishment for my spirit that will last until my next visit to the magic edge of the world.

Some might consider me sad, and lonely, and abandoned. I admit that there are times when I agree with that assesment. But then a lovely poem crosses my feed, or a couple of friends appear on my porch with a bottle of whiskey, a gluten-free chocolate cake, and a basket of snacks. The world turns another click; the clouds part; and the tender blue of the summer sky surrounds me. I whisper to myself, If I am not blessed, then no one is.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

Once in a while I cannot hold back the accumulated tears torn from my eyes by every little thing that life sends crashing into my fragile orbit.

A mother visits the shop with her two daughters. She selects a digital depiction of hummingbirds from a back display and sets it on the counter. It reminds me of my daughter Gianni, she tells me. I see the shine in her eyes that I know comes from the peculiar mixture of joy and sorrow. She died in December, but she remains with us. She touches a sterling butterfly on a chain at her throat. The girls standing next to her reach for the necklaces which they, too, wear in honor of the one present only in their hearts. Every time I see a hummingbird, I think she is with me, the woman softly tells me.

I suppress a sob, smiling at the memories they share of the precious soul.

A few minutes after they leave, three folks sit on the bench outside my store. I lean over and adjust the music which plays on the speaker beside where they tarry. I suppose that I’m still thinking of the little girl, because I play Beth Nielsen Chapman’s Sand and Water, a haunting tribute to her deceased husband. When the trio enters the store, they ask about the music. They wander among the art and handcrafts in our little collective and leave a note on our Gratitude Wall. We trade stories. Just before they go, one of them spies my book on its small shelf by the door. He stands reading from pages over which I spent many hours agonizing, selecting each essay from the ten years of accumulated scribblings.

He buys the book and I inscribe it to him. He turns a page and reads a sentence outloud for his companions. I remember writing those words; I remember everything. The sound of another’s voice speaking what I composed almost overwhelms me.

My cell phone rings; and the three wave goodbye as I answer my son’s call. He checks on me most days, and when I’m in the shop, he phones to learn the quote of the day. I read it to him: “I have nature, and art, and poetry. If that is not enough, what is enough?” He asks to whom it is attributed. I tell him, Vincent Van Gogh. While we are talking, the man who bought by book stands outside, reading from it. As I watch he slips back into the shop and offers me a hug. I receive it without hesitation.

We have a tradition at my shop of taking photos of our customers with their purchases. We post them on our social media pages and tag the artists. The three of them let me take their photo but they say, softly, that they would rather not be on Facebook. I promise; and I have kept that promise. But I share their picture here, in my world, where only you and I and God can see them.

They deserve that much.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

From the road, I train my cell phone’s eye on two fields. A small boat knifes through the slough while a ship heads to the Pacific through the deep channel of the San Joaquin. Oblivious to my scrutiny, the captains of each vessel navigate forward, determined to see the sunset from stable shores.

My engine hums, waiting for the shift and acceleration that will take us around the dogleg bend towards the park and the evening’s chores. I realize that these two boats actually sit distant from each other. One easily cuts through the calm expanse between neighboring marinas. The other’s long, heavy hull carries tons of cargo bound for the San Francisco port. Only my perspective sets the race; only the distortion of my inadequate lens pits them against one another.

I close my eyes, knowing that in the few seconds of my exhausted distraction, the race will evaporate. The motor boat will turn a corner into its own slough, while the ship will angle itself into the confluence of two venerable waters, heading towards Suisun Bay. But still I picture them neck-and-neck in crashing waves, dozens of crewmen on the ship’s deck while a single boater clutches the till of the smaller vessel. I cheer from the shore, loud and lusty, encouraging the lone sailor to hold its line while the cargo ship streams forward and its mates raise their fists in a glorious, universal pledge to victory.

In my car, idling in a layby on Brannan Island Road, I open my eyes to an empty vista. I can barely see the stern of the ship as it ponderously turns south by southwest. The smaller boat has already motored to its own safe berth. On the western horizon, the sun spreads its glow across the line of turbines. Its grandeur catches my attention; I release a long slow sigh. After a few minutes, I signal my intent, move onto the roadway, and continue my silent drive home.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®