Goines On: In therapy

Click image for more vignettes

A colleague and friend of Goines from years ago had recently revealed he’d been in therapy. Goines had been in therapy too, at first in the early ’70s, during the time he and Kramer had worked in the same IBM department, so he was curious about Kramer’s therapy, wanted to share notes, exchange revelations. 

    But over the course of three or four emails, Kramer offered only brief, cryptic responses, concluding with a belligerently explicit refusal to tell Goines anything.

    Goines’ initial impulse, after reading Kramer’s final email, was to reply, “Fuck you too,” but he restrained himself and went to bed in silence, asking for some counseling from Artesia.

A Couple of Maroons: Bubble in the Paint

Photo by Craig McCollum
Text by Maik Strosahl

A few weeks ago, Craig posted this photo showing an alert on his phone. I was more intrigued by the image in the background. It looked like something got into some wet paint. Never shy to ask questions, I shot off a message inquiring to see the full pic and find out any details he might have on the subject.
    “Reflection of my Subi in a mud puddle,” came the reply.

A Couple of Maroons: Grand Prismatic Spring

“Grand Prismatic Spring”
Click image to enlarge

Where Are All
the Rainbows?

Photo by Craig McCollum
Text by Maik Strosahl

There is a place in Wyoming where the rainbows brew into the clouds as they cross the mountains. They call it the Grand Prismatic Spring.
    In 1807-08, after the Lewis and Clark Expeditions, one of the members of the group named John Colter spent a lot of time exploring this region. When he returned to civilization, his reports of geysers, bubbling mud pots, and steaming pools of water were ridiculed, and the area was jokingly called Colter’s Hell. In 1839, fur trappers are also recorded as coming upon a “boiling lake” in this region.
    Grand Prismatic is the largest spring in the US and third largest in the world. The colors in the spring mirror those of rainbows, but change with the seasons and the level of microbes that thrive in the hot waters.
    It was the clouds that grabbed my attention here, backed up over the mountains. Perhaps they have problems they deal with in these Covid times?

Where Are All the Rainbows?

The Leprechauns are all waiting,
checking their Facebook statuses,
upgrade walls on Clash of Clans
while supply chain woes
back up their pots of gold
in the distant skies of China.

Do not blame the clouds
waiting in mountain harbors,
storms just waiting to burst
o’or an em’rald green,
nor the cauldron of molten prisms
boiling clear to Excelsior,
bubbling full production,
overfilling underground shelves.

Copyright © 2022 by Craig McCollum & Maik Strosahl
Originally a flat lander, Craig A. McCollum received his degree in photography and headed west. He lives in Montana with his wife and two sons, exploring the outdoors while hiking, biking, and chasing moose – the latter only with a camera, of course.
Michael E. Strosahl has focused on poetry for over twenty years, during which time he served a term as President of the Poetry Society of Indiana. He relocated to Jefferson City, Missouri, in 2018 and currently co-hosts a writers group there.

A Couple of Maroons: Behind the Splash

Detail from
4th photo

By Craig McCollum & Maik Strosahl

More than one reader have requested more information about how the photo for our “Making a Splash” piece from September was produced. Let Craig tell you about it:

It was a lazy afternoon hanging out on the shoreline of Echo Lake in Montana. The sky was still filled with smoke from distant summer wildfires. It was getting late and I was caught by how the hazel light from the sun reflected across the water.

A Couple of Maroons: A River Runs Through

Detail from
second photo

By Craig McCollum & Maik Strosahl

While Craig is working on an upcoming post, I am trying to beat our deadline before leaving for a family vacation, so I grabbed a couple of Craig’s photos and ran with it. —Maik
    A River Runs Through It was the last film in a theater that I went to with my father. And we didn’t really have a history of going to movies. When we were kids, I remember going to see Bambi when it came around in the ’70s. Then there was a carload night in the early ’80s with a double feature that included an updated Lone Ranger. I had to sleep through the second feature because by then I had a paper route and would have to wake up early to do the deliveries. That was it. Until 1992’s A River Runs Through It.

A Couple of Maroons: Making a Big Splash

Detail from “Sun Glass”

By Craig McCollum & Maik Strosahl

[Editor’ Note: Today we launch a new column, under the byline of Columnist Maik Strosahl and his guest, Craig McCollum.]


This isn’t about me, Maik Strosahl.
    I was an awkward teen – I mean who wasn’t? But maybe I was a bit farther left field than most. I was the one who thought it would be funny for my friends and me to put Hostess wrapper characters in our Velcro wallets and flash them at people as if they were some special badge for a secret society. I was the one who wrote a satire called “The Cabbage Patch Massacre,” about a crazed German student who went around shredding 1982’s must-have Christmas present, making cole slaw and sauerkraut out of their stuffing. When that handwritten masterpiece got lost being passed around from student to student, I wrote the sequel. I encouraged a few brave classmates to stand on the street corner at lunch, pulling up our pantlegs to show passing cars our ankles, just trying to get reactions. And after reading the classic 1984, I decided it needed a sequel too, and created “1994,” where Big Momma was defeated by Veto Bomb Missiles – hidden in plain view as tubes of Aim toothpaste on billboards.

Thor's Day: Thanksb’giving

Sacramental

By Morris Dean

A friend told me recently that he’s looking forward to Christmas, because he so much enjoys choosing the perfect gift to put under people’s trees – something that says “thank you” to each person in a way he or she can recognize and appreciate: giving as a way of saying thanks, or saying thanks by giving.