Former Career Fire and EMS Lieutenant-Specialist, Writer, and Master Photographer.
Tag: Penfold
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The solstice always comes like an alarm clock I didn’t set. This year, it hit me harder than any before. At age forty-six, I finally broke. I set my phone to erase every message the second it came in. Calls went straight to nowhere. I deleted every app that ever made me feel like I…
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Last month, I lost one of my friends from work. We had worked together on the same Tuesday night shift for well over a decade, and in that time we became more than just two people on the crew. In a career like ours, you grow accustomed to seeing loss—line-of-duty tragedies, sudden retirements, familiar faces…
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The stereo’s spinning again. Not a Bluetooth speaker, not some cold digital stream humming through soulless plastic—but an actual stereo. The kind with physical buttons you can punch down like you’re dialing into a memory. Indigo Girls – 1200 Curfews. Track 12. Closer to Fine. A CD I’ve owned since it came out, and one…
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I drove like hell through the night, the highway stretching endlessly before me, my headlights cutting through the darkness like a blade. The only sound was the hum of the tires on the asphalt and the music playing on my cell phone. I didn’t stop, didn’t slow down. I just kept driving, pushing forward even…
