When I was a little kid, I spent a lot of time on our back porch. Our house, built by my grandfather in the late 1920s, was an early Craftsman style, high up on piers with five very large rooms inside, many tall, double-hung windows,… Read More
A dear old friend of mine texted me last week that he was in the hospital and had just been told that he had only a few months to live. His text was bizarre, full of Woody Guthrie quotes and quixotic quips that… Read More
Perhaps the most memorable song from the 1967 film The Graduate is Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.” Who can forget the final scene when Elaine, in her white wedding dress, and Ben, in his white hoodie, plop themselves down, breathless and laughing,… Read More
If you’ve been reading this web post regularly, you know that I am really into Halloween. At one point, I actually had more storage bins full of Halloween decorations than I did for Christmas (though I have been trying bit-by-bit to scale back on all… Read More
Amazing how as you get older, less and less matters. Of course, for a writer, when less and less matters, there is less and less to write about. I’ve been in this state of ennui for a while now, which is why I… Read More
I have never been person who clings to the past. I’m not terribly sentimental and I carry forward neither grudges nor regrets. When I recall the past at all, it is because some small reminder, a photo or a song, conjures up usually… Read More
October is birthday month: my own, my son’s, even my dog’s. We’ve always made much of birthdays in our family. From the time I was four or five, I had these elaborate, themed birthday parties. My mother went all out. One year, after a summer… Read More
the narrative thread 