Thus the woods are filled with this sound

The other day, while we were out riding together on the Arizona Trail, my daughter and I stopped off to the side of one of the trails we ride regularly to inspect a little check-dam she made a springtime or two ago.  She was pleased to find that it was working well, holding back a small pool of bubbly, dark-green water.  Nevertheless, she added a rock or two to the top of the dam to stem the water's egress due to the pool's rising tide.

And then, as she was crossing back to the bank where I was sitting, she slipped and fell in.

Two Hundred

I officially started putting real content on this blog back in 2009, hopeful, at the time, that it would become "a place for me to write, to practice writing," in order to keep my pencil sharp, so to speak.  

Prior to the founding of this website, through no fault of my own, I'd lost every single one of my regular, recurring writing gigs, those that paid and those that didn't.  Thus left otherwise without options, my choices were simple: either I was going to stop writing, or I would need to find a new place to be published.  And thus: I signed up for a blog: rockychrysler.blogspot.com. "A place to practice, a place to just write.  For lack of any other venue, like millions of other writers, by default This Blog will be the place."

And, I'm happy to say, it has been.

Archival Footage: C. H. Ellis

C. H. Ellis

In 1983, when I was 16, I wrote a term paper about my great-great grandfather for my sophomore Arizona Government class. Some thirty years later, I think it's still a worthy bio which recalls the life of an uncommon and compassionate individual, Dr. Clarence Harmon [C. H.] Ellis, who was my father's father's father's father-in-law (and the origin of my daughter's middle-name: Ellise).  

I am pleased to be one of his many descendants.

I scanned (.pdf) the fragile 30-year-old onion-skin papers that this report was typed on earlier today and have included the complete text below, with but a few necessary revisions and a number of freshly-added photos and links.