Field Notes

The Clown Always Won Out

I still remember the Labor Day weekends of my childhood. Memories etched in like the words to Ice Ice Baby or U Can't Touch This or Friends in Low Places. Late summer in western Oklahoma has a smel...

Eleven years of ups and downs.

I never set out to start a business. I set out to make something I needed for my makeup kit and for myself.I have made a lot of costly mistakes. I have also had some real wins. Some days I question...

A Certain Hour

There is a certain hour in summer I love. It's the moment just before golden hour hits. The heat of the day is still there, but the light begins to change. Everything softens. For a few minutes, th...

July Fifth

America turned two hundred and fifty yesterday. This morning it smells like the day after. Smoke settling low. Cut grass gone warm. Somebody's flag still out on the porch. I keep thinking about wha...

Pride, Always

I grew up in Canute, Oklahoma. Population near five hundred. Wheat and cotton in every direction. Wind that never quite stopped. Softness was not encouraged there. Not in boys. You learned early wh...

The Quiet Work of Summer Skin

On the Canvas Under Sunscreen In America, Memorial Day weekend has quietly become the beginning of summer. Longer afternoons. More time outside. More skin exposed to the sun than it has seen in mon...

A Mother’s Day Without Her

My mother was Anita Kathleen McRee Peña. She was raised on the farm on the Washita County and Beckham County line outside of Elk City. The same farm I was raised on. Daughter of Wanda Gene Towns an...

Stoner

My parents smoked. When they did, they would light incense to cover it.The house smelled like smoke trying to become something else.It usually happened at night. The windows were closed. The air fe...

A Spring Reset, Right on Time

Tax Day. April 15. There is something clarifying about a hard deadline. By noon today, most of us have signed something, submitted something, closed something out. The year has been accounted for, ...

What Natural Fragrance Really Means

There is a lot of noise around the word “clean.” It has become a category. A label. Something that can be applied loosely. At Leland Francis, it has always meant something specific. From the beginn...