Don Mitchell | writer / photographer / book designer / anthropologist

Nuclear Families

Seventy-nine years ago today (9 August 1945) the bomb known as “Fat Man” fell away from the B-29 bomber “Bockscar,” and detonated about 1,500 feet over Nagasaki. Fat Man exploded with the force of about 21 kilotons of TNT, immediately killing somewhere between 40,000 and 75,000 Japanese, mostly civilians. I was just over two years…

A Tale of Two youtube Channels

Can there be such a thing as an epistolary blog posting? Sure! Here’s one that played out in February, 2023. First up, an exchange with someone from the youtube channel Murder Murder News. Hello — Earlier today I was doing a reverse image search for some of my Jane Britton portraits, and I noticed that…

Boom Box (for my mother on her 119th birthday)

When this woman and I moved into the new place and we each started unpacking our things I was suprised to see this pink boombox, not decorator pink, but little girl pink and I said, What the hell is that? She said, What does it look like, it’s a boombox. I got it at…

Sharp Edges

I belong to a Facebook ground called “Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame,” in which people post astonishingly nutty “archaeology” that they find out there on the web, but especially on Facebook. Giants, mudflood, Tartaria, aliens made the pyramids, and so on and so on ad nauseum. It’s completely wacky stuff. But a few days ago…

Seven Years is Too Damn Long

A few websites out there declare that I “occasionally blog at don-mitchell.com” Occasionally. Right. My last posting was in late 2014, when I was in Eagle Rock CA, on a trip with Ruth Thompson. We’d been to our 50th Stanford reunion, and had done a few readings in Northern California. A lot has changed since…

How Much Of This Is Real?

Last week I was having dinner with my friend Bob, who hadn’t seen A Red Woman Was Crying. Bob works in network television. He’s the editor of a series and therefore is always dealing with the show’s reality (captured image sequences and sounds) which he arranges and rearranges and modifies according to his judgement about…

Bougainville and China aren’t so far apart

A few weeks ago, I surfed over to The Nervous Breakdown to see whether anybody had commented on a “self-interview” I’d posted. TNB lets writers have a lot of fun with the self-interviews. Some go for versions of stand-up routines, some are serious, and some — like mine — are meant to be read as…

“My Writing Process” – Blog Tour

I’m friends with a terrific writer named Rolf Yngve who blogs at Chasing the Wolf Tone. A few years ago I happened on Rolf’s prize-winning story “Efendim” and was so blown away that I set out to find him, and did, and now we’re electronic friends. I hope to meet him one of these days….

Peter Matthiessen is gone

Peter Matthiessen (May 22, 1927 – April 5, 2014) died today. I admired him greatly. This week I’ve been composing a three postings, and they’re all in the loose, undisciplined going-everywhere state that means they’re not close to being ready. One of them exists only in my head. I think about it while I’m walking…