Tag: john d nesbitt (Page 3 of 8)

Fifth Wheels

March 10, 2020 / John D. Nesbitt / 2 Comments

Sometimes I recall an incident in which my father and another man were talking about a fifth wheel. This was many years ago, when I was in my late teens and when fifth wheels were not common features of recreational vehicles. They were used almost exclusively with large equipment such as trucks and farm tractors. I asked what a fifth wheel was, and instead of just explaining, my father took the occasion to criticize me for not knowing. “It’s a fifth wheel. That’s what it is. Don’t you know what a fifth wheel is?”

What the Western Has to Offer

March 3, 2020 / John D. Nesbitt / 1 Comment

During the summer between my fifth- and sixth-grade years, I had to go to the hospital to have my appendix taken out. While I was there, I read my first traditional western. I was ten going on eleven, and as I recall, the pediatric ward was full, so I was put in another ward to share a room with an old man (old to me, probably no older than I am now) who had stomach ulcers. Not having much in common with my roommate, and being a proficient reader, I turned my attention to the reading fare on hand. It was a novel called West of Abilene. For years after that, I had lingering memories of a few of its salient features.

May I Continue to Remember

February 11, 2020 / John D. Nesbitt / 6 Comments

It is a truth, perhaps not universally acknowledged, that a large percentage of college instructors come from middle-and lower-middle-class families of industrial workers, construction workers, hard-scrabble farmers, farm workers, and other blue-collar employees. I am one of them. Like a great many people I have met in my line of work, I chose a profession that offered a moderate but secure income and a modicum of status—two things that I did not grow up with; like many of my colleagues, I followed the ideal of humanistic education rather than the lure of material success.

“Rangeland Lament”

January 28, 2020 / John D. Nesbitt / 0 Comments

“Rangeland Lament” is a song recorded by Carol Markstrom and included on her award-winning Desert Rose album. I wrote the original lyrics to it, and it has been a great honor to see my work end up in such a distinguished place.

When the Poet Calls

December 31, 2019 / John D. Nesbitt / 0 Comments

It has happened to me, and I imagine it has happened to many of you: an aspiring poet is ready to “do something” with his or her work but needs a little help in knowing how to get it published (or “publicated,” as I have heard it called). Sometimes it is difficult to respond to such a request, but I have stumbled onto a few points that could be useful to others in giving direction to the emerging poet.

Write with Pride

December 24, 2019 / John D. Nesbitt / 2 Comments

I could see I was snowed in but good. My circular drive had three huge drifts, and the dirt road that led out to the paved road was drifted over in several places. Snow was still falling, and a hard, cruel wind was blowing from the northwest—a true Wyoming blizzard. I walked the half mile out to the corner to see how bad it was, and I decided I wasn’t going anywhere. Even if I did dig myself out and manage to get to the main road, I would lose a few hours, and most of my work would be drifted over when I got back.

Strange Fish

December 17, 2019 / John D. Nesbitt / 2 Comments

I had been teaching English as a grad student for five years, part-time, when I received an appointment to teach a section of composition at a branch campus of a community college. I had done an internship at the same place a year before, which meant that I had worked for free, grading papers and giving lectures for the regular instructor. Now he was on sabbatical, and his work load was divided up among a few part-time adjuncts, including me.

In the Great Tradition

November 4, 2019 / John D. Nesbitt / 0 Comments

When I was a grad student at UC Davis in the 1970’s, I believed in a liberal education. With a B.A. from UCLA, I entered the Ph.D. program in English in 1971, and I was in no hurry to specialize. University life seemed natural to me. Unlike some of my fellow students of that era, I enjoyed preparing for the foreign language exams, I liked all areas of literature, and I loved teaching English 1, the freshman composition course. Philosophically at least, I felt responsible for everything in my field, but I also felt I should be free to study what I wanted.

Darlings of the Dust Commentary

September 24, 2019 / John D. Nesbitt / 0 Comments

“Darlings of the Dust” is a short story that appears in the anthology Contention and Other Frontier Stories, released by Five Star Publishing in May 2019. In my story, the cowboy detective named Dunbar (from his own series of Dark Prairie, Death in Cantera, and others) arrives in the town of Westlock, Wyoming, and goes to work at the Paradise Valley Ranch.

Pearl of Great Price Commentary

September 17, 2019 / John D. Nesbitt / 1 Comment

“Pearl of Great Price” is a novella that came out with Sundown Press, a division of Prairie Rose Publications, in August of 2018. It was reprinted in book form along with a handful of other stories in a collection entitled Tales of the Old West, also by Sundown Press. “Pearl of Great Price” runs to 12,000 words, somewhere in the range between long short story and novella. As with other works I have written in middle length, this story found its own length according to the magnitude of the idea I had.

Tag: john d nesbitt (Page 3 of 8)

Fifth Wheels

What the Western Has to Offer

May I Continue to Remember

“Rangeland Lament”

When the Poet Calls

Write with Pride

Strange Fish

In the Great Tradition

Darlings of the Dust Commentary

Pearl of Great Price Commentary

John D. Nesbitt

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Website

John D. Nesbitt Meta

Blog Archives

Search John D. Nesbitt