Abby's Alley

Scorn not eternity as a monotonous strumming of harps Or an austere chorus endlessly bending the knee. Cast it not aside as dull, unlike the riotous and rowdy hell, Where the mischievous dance like an endless Halloween night.
For hell must forever be shrinking into a repetition of uniform insanity, While Wisdom’s haven swells with the god-men’s inventions and strength. And if that inspires you not, muse with me then the possibilities When Wisdom indwells man and our dreams are birthed in eternity.
Consider the untapped power then coursing through our veins, When God remakes us to rule without blindness or misdeed. Then amidst a thousand dangers that hitherto we’d only feared, We pursue without exhaustion all knowledge, strength, and design.

Might we harvest lightning, contrive alloys, and wrinkle time To delve into seas and galaxies much deeper than sci-fi films? Might we learn the languages that birds and reptiles and mammals speak, And astride our own pterodactyls, teach them to dodge ocean cyclon…

The world is full of grime and foulness. Some places more than others. And I cannot help seeing it there on the parking lot asphalt at Vallarta or in the dark on the sidewalk where the cockroaches skitter past my sandaled feet. I caught sight of a bearded man pulling up his pants after squatting in the gutter last night on Beverly Boulevard. I see red-faced men standing in the check-out line with their Modelo boxes, and I see the heavily made-up ladies with their see-through blouses and hot pants pulling their significant others down the grocery store aisles. I see despondency and weariness in the sunken eyes of the security guard. On the drive home from the grocery store, I see the pile of broken furniture, papers, shoes, and glass at the bottom of our alley. That pile continues to grow and spread as people riffle through the debris that some residence left there. It makes our neighborhood feel run down.
I was paying for a decaf coffee at the Dunkin’ Donuts drive thru, and Rose from t…

For the last several months, I've been selling old coins on eBay from Mike Hamilton's collection and learning a bit about numismatics. I've really only dabbled very lightly in the subject as there is so much to know about mint marks and engravers and metals. So far everything is fascinating.  

The oldest coin I've sold is an 1804 half cent. That was only28years after America declared its independence. William Wordsworth wrote I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud that year. Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself emperor. Thomas Jefferson was president. Ladies' dresses had empire waist lines in England. And the land that was to one day become the city of Whittier was owned by Manual Nieto of Mexico.


In 1910, Edmond Otis Dickinson and Annie Elizabeth (Hayes) Dickenson, my great-great-grandparents moved into a house on Whittier Boulevard to begin their citrus ranch. 

Not long after that, Lewis and Emma Shreve, Philip's great-great-grandparents, moved from Ohio to California and l…