PERSONAL ESSAYS AND VISIONS from 7,000 feet. For some of us who end up in the Terrible High Desert™ and mountains of northern New Mexico, the starkness is a kind of medicine. There’s something alien and ancient here that doesn’t need us… Subscribe to this and you will have a taste.
From the introduction to ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE: Notes from Taos:
“You're one of the few who arrived and immediately experienced the spiritual imagination of the place and appreciated it in an articulate and instinctive way. What intrigues me is how many people move here and are tone deaf. I can't figure out why they are here since they might as well live in Colorado: beautiful but soulless...the chthonic spirits are absent. ‘Course sometimes a man needs relief from the resonating spirits. They can drive you mad.”
-Bill Whaley: Taos writer (GRINGO LESSONS), publisher (The Horse Fly)
There’s a “real” website, too. By all means check out JHFARR.COM for 900+ blog posts, photos, and contact info—all searchable via keywords, dates, categories, & tags—as well as my Amazon author page. My Smugmug photo gallery is an astonishing visual history of our time here. I’m all over Twitter. What else?
I’ve been publishing online since 1996. Before then, in some cases long before then, I was a college instructor, woods hippie, groundskeeper, metal sculptor, cartoonist, bronze caster, office manager, artist, rock & roll songwriter, web columnist, online senior news editor, and self-published author. We moved out here from the Eastern Shore of Maryland in ‘99. Almost immediately, Bill Whaley hired me to write a long-running column called “El Emigrante” for his inimitable Horse Fly newspaper, where I learned some things I still can’t talk about—the man in black with a satchel and a gun, etc. There was a long stint in there as a web designer, too. Besides the 900+ blog posts mentioned above, you’ll find the years since then in Buffalo Lights: Maryland to New Mexico, Taos Soul: Love Stories, Heroes, and Wild Adventure, Another Day in Paradise: Notes from Taos, and of course The Helen Chronicles: When Your Mother Falls Apart, which I heartily recommend to anyone whose parents ate their young.
“With all the things you’ve done, why the hell do you need a Substack, and why am I even reading this?”
My WordPress site is huge and ponderous, although I cross-post most things now. The Substack interface is limited but slick. Photos, tweets, videos and audio drop right in. I can let loose here and write like thunder. These posts show up in your email. It looks fantastic on your phone. GODDAMN BUFFALO is also free for now, enjoy.
But the main reason you should subscribe is that this is where I post the new stuff first…
¡Buena suerte!
☀︎ LOG CABIN HOME IN THE SKY BULLETIN ☀︎Seeking piece of Earth w/ trees, water, broadband, decent house. Prefer northern New Mexico, but try me. Gracias. Secret email link button takes you to a safe email link at my main website. Try it!
