Marty’s photo of the day #4732: Four years ago, this week, Donald Trump was busy fucking up the United States’ response to COVID-19, killing hundreds of thousands of people. All my in-person college speaking gigs were cancelled accept one: Eastern Arizona College. After the college assured me that everyone in the audience would be masked, […]
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Category: Stories
Day #4 of Seven Marty Essen Books in Seven Days
Day #4 of Seven Marty Essen Books in Seven Days, featured in order of publication. We continue with Time Is Irreverent 2: Jesus Christ, Not Again! This is the second novel in what would become the Time Is Irreverent Trilogy. Unfortunately, the advertising departments at Amazon and Facebook refused to allow me to use this […]
Day #3 of Seven Marty Essen Books in Seven Days
Day #3 of Seven Marty Essen Books in Seven Days, featured in order of publication. After writing two nonfiction books, I switched to fiction. Time Is Irreverent is both hilarious and irreverent, and it introduced me to the concept of “review bombing.” Despite open-minded people loving the novel, conservative Christians (many who never even read […]
Day #2 of Seven Marty Essen Books in Seven Days
Day #2 of Seven Marty Essen Books in Seven Days, featured in order of publication. We continue with the four-time award-winning Endangered Edens: Exploring the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica, the Everglades, and Puerto Rico. “Join photographer extraordinaire Marty Essen and his intrepid wife Deb on their adventures through four Endangered Edens. You’ll be […]
Day #1 of Seven Marty Essen Books in Seven Days
Day #1 of Seven Marty Essen Books in Seven Days, featured in order of publication. We start with the six-time award-winning classic, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents. “This is a wonderful book—a labor of love—that describes in soul-stirring language what it is like to live with the people, the animals, the birds, […]
Crossing to Antarctica
Marty’s photo of the day #4695: Deb and I have occasionally talked about returning to Antarctica, but we recently learned that getting to Antarctica by crossing the Drake Passage (famous for the roughest seas in the world) has largely become a thing of the past. Instead, people fly down to Antarctica and then get on […]
One of my all-time favorite radio interviews
Marty’s photo of the day #4686: I came across this today while going through my photo files, looking for a wildlife photo to post. Obviously, it’s not wildlife, but it was wild. It’s from one of my favorite radio interviews of all-time. I was on a book tour, in 2016, for my second book, Endangered […]
Keep-away
Marty’s photo of the day #4670: Now that Nellie’s bionic left-rear leg is totally healed, we are back to all our old pre-surgery routines. One of those routines is a vigorous game of keep-away each morning, where Nellie will grab a stick and run at me full speed, only to dodge my grasp for the […]
Hippos, the second day
Marty’s photo of the day #4659: As anyone who has read my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents, or seen my college show, Around the World in 90 Minutes, knows, my wife, Deb, and I were attacked by a hippo on the Zambezi River in Zimbabwe. The hippo literally bit through […]
Nellie is back!
Marty’s photo of the day #4653: Nellie is back! As many of you know, Nellie had TPLO surgery on her left rear leg on November 1. That surgery involved removing her cranial cruciate ligament, refitting the bone in her knee, and holding everything together with a metal plate and six screws. It’s her “bionic leg.” […]
The Memory Rock
Marty’s photo of the day #4651: This photo, from late October 2020, brings back a lot of memories for me. The COVID-19 pandemic was still in the Trumpy stage, and I got booked to present my show, “Around the World in 90 Minutes,” at Eastern Arizona College. Most of my other college gigs had been […]
Magic at 3:00 a.m.
Marty’s photo of the day #4648: The expedition to Antarctica Deb and I did many years ago for my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents, was absolutely magical. We’ve discussed doing it again, but we know that trying to recreate magic like that seldom works. Then, this week, we learned that […]
Night walks in the forest with Nellie
Marty’s photo of the day #4644: Nellie loves routines, and with her it only takes once to establish a precedent. After she had TPLO surgery on November 1st, to get her bionic left-rear leg, she would get me up three and four times a night to go for walks in the forest. I was happy […]
The hardest parts of recovery
Marty’s photo of the day #4638: I blindly shot this photo through my legs this morning. I thought about straightening it in my photo program, but I think it’s funnier tilted. As many of you know, Nellie had TPLO surgery on her left rear leg on November 1. That surgery involved removing her cranial cruciate […]
Marc-André Fleury
Marty’s photo of the day #4635: It was so much fun watching Marc-André Fleury become the second winningest goalie in NHL history last night, leading the Minnesota Wild to a 5 to 0 shutout of the New York Islanders. Pulling for Fleury is so much better than pulling for assholes, such as football’s Aaron Rodgers. […]
Kate, raccoon!
Marty’s photo of the day #4634: This old photo, shot directly behind Deb’s and my house, will always make me think of our late golden retriever, Kate. She was the first to spot the raccoon, and for years afterward we could call out, “Kate, raccoon!” and she’d look in the same tree. Admittedly, I often […]
The untouched first book cover photo
Marty’s photo of the day #4620: For my final picture of the year, I’m posting the untouched photo for the cover of the First Edition of my first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents. That’s a tailless whip scorpion on my face, and my wife, Deb, shot the photo in the Amazon […]
Nellie’s X-rays
Marty’s photos of the day #4617-4618: Yesterday Nellie had her final appointment with the surgeon who created her bionic left-rear leg. What you are looking at are two X-rays from that appointment. The first photo shows a view of five of the six screws inserted into Nellie’s leg. TPLO surgery (Doggie Tommy John) involves removing […]
40 buckets of sand and 40 sleepless hours
Marty’s photo of the day #4613: My Christmas weekend so far: Deb (wife), Nellie (dog), and I live on a private gravel road in the mountains of Montana. We have three neighbors above us, and the climb to our houses on that road is steep and often icy in the winter. Our two newest neighbors […]
Nellie’s bionic leg update
Marty’s photo of the day #4610: Seven-and-a-half weeks have passed since Nellie got her new bionic left-rear leg (TPLO surgery to remove a ligament, reshape/refit the bone, and install a metal plate with 6 screws). Nellie’s recovery is coming along on schedule. She doesn’t limp anymore when outside, but still limps sometimes inside—especially after a […]