Don Mitchell

writer / photographer / book designer / anthropologist

Transit of Venus

They are standing across the street from the house of six nuns and he’s wondering if the copper beech tree that people come from all over to admire will lay a branch or sheaf of leaves across the narrow passage between it and the next one that the woman he’s about to leave (though she…

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…

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…

About my writing (2014)

Back in 2014 I participated in an online group sharing their writing processes. We all answered three questions and posted our answers. Ten years later they are still reasonable answers, although the novel I mention went back into the archives and I have another one done that I’m sending around. I have a story collection…