Thirteen Ways of Looking at an Island

July 10, 2015 -- From a week of kayaking the Salish Sea with a Sigma zoom lens (100-300 mm), thirteen views of Sucia Island, an early home to the Lummi people. The island's cryptic geology, which alarmed Spanish explorers, owes its designs to intertidal erosion and the sculpting of countless organisms. Stony clams protruding from the walls of Fossil Bay, for example, tell a story 80 million years in the making.

Photo of the Day

August 5, 2012 -- The view from Washington's Clark County Fair and "The World's Premier Canine Aquatics Competition."

The View from Churchill Downs

June 15, 2012 -- Juliet's Promise, a fourth generation descendant of Secretariat, wins Race 7 and RBM $10 on an unremarkable Friday at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. The story of six furlongs, as told upstairs:

The View from Yankton

May 12, 2012 -- For the annual Humane Society fundraiser in Yankton, South Dakota, a rancher from Tyndall brings his menagerie: exotic pheasants, spitting alpacas, and a month-old, one-humped camel.

Speaking of the Bigger Stuff

via "Remembering Osh"

RBM's essay "I'd Like to Talk About the Bigger Stuff," which won Phoebe's inaugural nonfiction contest and appeared in print earlier this year, is now available online. Another excerpt:

To the west, through the helicopter’s tea-colored portals, I can see Uzbekistan; the cotton fields and cherry trees of the Fergana Valley; and a long, maniacal border severing one village from the next. I imagine, for a moment, an engorged Stalin, dragging a fountain pen down a wide gray map. Skirting his line, as though his hand ignored the topography, march row after row of mountaintops. They look cold and lifeless from on high. They divide Bishkek from the farmlands and become impassable in winter. Reminding the Russified Kyrgyz, who prefer white rice, of those hotheaded Uzbeks, who prefer red. But that’s enough imperial history.

To read this and more from Phoebe 40.2, as well as other debut nonfiction, visit PhoebeJournal.com.

The View from Wall Drug

August 15, 2011 -- Toys, taxidermy, and a Trappist chapel for customers at Wall Drug Store in Wall, South Dakota. The placard at the chapel's entrance celebrates “the priests and ministers who have served on the wall of the Badlands since 1909.”

Photo of the Day

By R.B. Moreno

July 15, 2011 -- A dip with Plum and other Alaska natives in the Cache La Poudre River's Seaman Reservoir. Do you swim with dogs? It gets strange in this dispatch and "I'd Like to Talk About the Bigger Stuff."

Photo of the Day

By R.B. Moreno

Above: the view from my apartment window in Fort Collins, Colorado, on Saturday.

Nonfiction pop quiz! What species of bird is pictured? The first reader to identify this ground feeder and link to a photo gets (what else?) a fabulous tweet.

Photo of the Day

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May 20, 2011 -- The balance of power on the Moreno family farm in Ridgefield, Washington.

I'd Like to Talk About the Bigger Stuff

via Phoebe

An essay by RBM that questions relationships among Coloradoans, the Kyrgyz, and our animals has won Phoebe's inaugural nonfiction contest, judged by author (and screenwriter) Shauna Cross. The essay will appear in the George Mason University journal's fall issue (volume 40). An excerpt:

Dinner and a bowl of kumis, or fermented mare’s milk, prompts another tale, this one about the melting of the snows. “I was born in the mountains,” says Salmorbek, his whiskers flaring around the words. From here in Kant, the Tian Shan range looms impossibly high, stretching all the way to China and 10,000 feet above the Rockies. Somewhere up there, in celebration of the equinox, points Salmorbek, through the kitchen window, men mount horses and compete in a sort of airborne wrestling match. Instead of a ball, they fight for a dead sheep. “I too rode a horse,” he adds with pride. “But I was better at riding a tank.”

That night, locked among the carpets, I find “Reviving the Kyrgyz Horse” in the guidebook Kyrgyz Republic. “For centuries, the horse was vital to nomadic life,” reads the entry. I swallow hard at what comes next. The author quotes a French historian dismayed by a Soviet plan to civilize the Kyrgyz: “‘The shepherds were in tears,’ says Jacqueline Ripart. Some of the horses went into giant Soviet stud farms but most were killed for their meat.’”

For Phoebe's current nonfiction and other genres, visit the journal's blog, which for a limited time is offering an entire issue as a free download. You can also follow Phoebe on Twitter and Facebook.

via Phoebe

Update -- "I'd Like to Talk" is now available at PhoebeJournal.com along with contest results and artwork for Phoebe volume 40.2. Congratulations to fellow winners and HMs Aja Gabel and Dwight Holing (fiction), Mark Wagenaar and Grace Curtis (poetry), and Jessica McCaughey (nonfiction).

Laundry Day

Above: scenes from a barnyard in northern Kyrgyzstan where RBM has learned to wash clothes beneath a spigot.

The View from Fort Collins

By R.B. Moreno

Slideshow: Pooch Plunge 2009

At summer's end in Fort Collins, Colo., the public pool in City Park closes for cleaning. Just before the shutdown, something a little strange happens.