Sometime around 1970 I was offered the job as the art teacher for the Clarkton, Mo., public school. Notice there’s no s on the end of school. There was one school for grades kindergarten through 12. I mostly taught high school with a few hours each week in the lower grades. Clarkton is in the …
The end of this month will mark the one-year anniversary of my cancer surgery. If we can believe the doctors, they got it all. No more cancer. Zap! Gone! But the aftereffects of the five surgeries I’ve had so far are not fun, and there is a promise of more to come. The most bothersome …
In the mid-1980s Gabi and I published a quarterly statewide literary/arts magazine called Mississippi Arts & Letters. I wrote a column called Publisher’s Privilege. This is the one from the premiere issue, Winter 1983-84. We are thrilled that as of this year, MA&L is in the The University of Mississippi archives.
I think I’m almost done. First, Dr. Kim at Swedish Hospital removed the cancer from my nose. It was supposed to be an outpatient operation, in and out in a few hours. But once he got inside my nose he saw that the tumor was much larger than at first thought (about one and a …
Sometimes late at night or when I wake up in the morning a sentence or two unrelated to anything invades my brain. Often, it’s a line of dialogue with no context. Whatever it is, and from whatever recesses of my unconscious it arises, I then lay in bed for the longest time writing and re-writing …
It was August 1955. Or maybe it was ’54, my memory is not perfect. But I’m going to go with ’55. We spent that entire summer in a rented house on a lake in Louisiana, fishing, swimming, waterskiing, and at night betting matchsticks on poker. Didn’t have a TV, paid no attention to the news. …
Ring, ring, ring. On the way from the radiation room to the front door there’s a big brass bell with a sign saying ring three times to announce when you’ve finished your final radiation treatment. Well, it’s not really a big bell, medium-sized maybe, and it might not really be brass. But I like to …
by Alec Clayton I finally finished my latest novel, Locked In. It’s my eleventh novel. It has taken well over two years to finish writing it, for Gabi to finish editing it, and for me to complete a final re-write. Locked In is the story of a lifelong fight for justice and of romance and …
The folks at Radiant Radiology, a part of Providence Regional Cancer System, are great. They answer questions and explain upcoming procedures patiently, thoroughly and clearly. After taking our wounded car to the body shop to get a repair estimate (see PART THREE), we took my wounded face to Radiant for a second consultation with Dr. …
My hair, where I have hair—a patch like a medieval monk’s tonsorial—was a madly matted yellow mess. The yellow comes from medicine during surgery and medicine infused tape. When I was finally able to take a shower, that got much of the yellow out. Now I can wash my head and get rid of some …