Welcome
Thanks for tuning into my latest Deep Dive. These essays are a labor of love. I never know where my next inspiration will come from or where it will lead me, I just try and go with it, letting the words flow from my brain, through my fingertips and onto the page. Sometimes these stories write themselves, other times it feels like pulling teeth. I’m glad you found your way here. Pull up a chair, sit back, relax and enjoy!
~ Louie
Encounter With An Owl
Yesterday at around 11:00am I saw a Great Horned Owl on the creek trail near my house. I’ve walked and biked this trail hundreds of times, seen all manner of aquatic birds and songbirds, river otters and turtles but never once an owl. I had originally planned on doing...
Take Part In The Arrival Of Spring!
The saying Spring has sprung is misleading. The word sprung implies something that happened immediately, unexpectedly, as in She sprung out from behind the tree to surprise me. I guess one could say that spring has indeed sprung…if you’ve been living life with...
New Stuff
A couple of weeks ago I bought a bunch of new stuff and man did it feel good! First up were the shoes. I’d been wearing the same black New Balance athletic shoes for biking and walking for something like the past five years. They were worn out and no longer felt good...
21
Dear Sam & Denali, Every year as your birthdays approaches, mom and I take a walk down Memory Lane. We’ll replay key events in your lives, making them come alive once again. One of our favorite stories to recount, and a preview of our lives to come as parents, is...
Emma’s Barbershop
To walk through the door of Emma’s Barbershop in Santa Rosa is to enter a portal to the past. An old school barber’s pole stands in the window, spinning its red and white stripes into infinity. The shop is small and narrow, customers wait for their haircuts in...
A Place Out Of Time
The sleepy little village of Yelapa, Mexico appears like a dream as our water taxi speeds south from Puerto Vallarta along the coast of Banderas Bay. We round a promontory and there it is, a perfect crescent scooped out of the land, it’s all azure sea and golden sand,...
One Tangerine At A Time
Donald Trump is once again wreaking havoc in the White House. Anger and hatred abound. Me? I’m out there spreading the love and kindness one tangerine at a time. We have several different types of fruit trees in our backyard but a little tangerine tree is by far the...
Solar Light Enchantment
Night begins to fall and the solar lights blink on one at a time, it’s a reliable progression. First is the light bulb replica, the incandescent variety basically unchanged since the days of Edison. It hangs from the bare branches of our Asian pear tree. Below the...
Buddha’s Got It All Figured Out
In this photo, Buddha’s eyes are closed in a state of silent meditation, his head tilted downward as he contemplates his navel, his body glows in stark contrast to the dull grey fence behind him. Buddha’s hands are in his lap, his thumb and forefingers touch in a...
Mac’s
I’m sitting at the counter of Mac’s Deli & Cafe in downtown Santa Rosa and it feels just like I’m in a movie about a typical morning at an old-school diner. My seat is a low, wicker- backed chair, the counter formica. Through the opening into the kitchen three...
Winter Trilogy
On the cusp of Winter Solstice, I've had some thoughts about the upcoming season. Leaf Ballet A handful of leaves cling stubbornly to the branches of our majestic valley oak, a tree that one day 20 years ago poked its spindly trunk cautiously out from the cover of...
Back To The Garden
The definitive song about a seminal event in the counterculture of the 1960s was written by someone who wasn’t even there. Joni Mitchell was supposed to be at Woodstock. She was also booked on the Dick Cavett Show the day after the festival was to end. Joni and her...