Michael Shay's Hummingbirdminds

I salute the turkey oak tree in my backyard. It's a tough little oak. I was looking out the sliding glass door a few weeks ago and saw...

This is from the official Woody Guthrie web site. I wanted the whole thing due to an ignorance in some quarters as to what the song is about...

Rob Tannenbaum wrote June 12 in the  New York Times : In songs like “Surfin’ U.S.A.,” “California Girls” and “Good Vibrations,” Wilson did...

In my 5/21 post, I brought up a term: word back. Used in a sentence: "I want my word back." Words in my English language have been...

Reading contemporary fiction has many rewards. First, you get a whopping good story. Second, when the writer knows their stuff, you feel...

This is my version of a prose poem that I dashed off late last night. Maybe it's not a prose poem. A ramble, maybe, or just a burst of w...

When I moved from Florida to Denver in 1978, I wandered down to the local bookstore and bought “Centennial” by James Michener. It was publis...

June 1966. My boss asked me why I was drilling a hole so close to the frothing ocean. High tide coming, boy. Looking for bananafish, I said,...

There’s a deer in the works. Not like Kurt Vonnegut’s errant deer in his Welcome to the Monkey House story. This deer just breezed by my ...

I am a sitter One who sits I sit all the time now My broken back. Was a time when you Couldn't get me to stay still  Could not get me to...

I was a bit shocked to find out that the Saturday Evening Post was still alive and celebrating its 200th anniversary. I know the Post from m...

The opener for one of the stories in my collection, The Weight of a Body , now available as an e-book on Amazon. The story was inspired by a...

I spent two hours this morning reading Tammy Christel’s Jackson Hole Art Blog and 12 days of posts on Tammy’s Facebook page  about the fall...

A Sunday morning round-up. I haven't written one of these in a long time. It's possible I lost interest during the plague year. The ...

My latest piece for Wyofile's Studio Wyoming Review has the header "The subject is roaches," a review of Laramie artist Shel...

What makes me most angry about Donald Trump as president of the U.S.A.? All of the kind and decent people who live in my country. They des...

Write short , said all the experts. Be concise.  I first heard this advice as a student reporter for my university paper. Give me 500 word...

A university professor complained on Facebook that her upper division literature students don't know the name Gerard Manley Hopkins. Nev...