Last year I had a severe bout of pneumonia, combined with a staph infection which caused my heart to go into an irregular rhythm called A-fib. I wrote about it in an email to my friend VJ: There was an incident during my two weeks of intensive care that I […]
I remember, back in 1993, when Lorena Bobbitt famously cut off her husband’s penis, that there was one (1) other instance of a female assaulting a male partner, and news anchors across the country, based on these two (2) cases, wondered if this was a dangerous new trend of women […]
There’s an expression in politics — I think it was Marshal Cobleigh who told me about it — where you “walk around the corner and meet yourself.” He and I were working for the president of the New Hampshire Senate at the time, and he was referring to a situation […]
I’ve just finished a book called Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson and found it positively riveting. I don’t often say this, but I think every American should read this book, especially those concerned with the criminal justice system. As a writer, Stevenson is in a class with Ernie Pyle, Alexander […]
Every morning when I fill my bird feeder, I put a row of sunflower seeds on the porch rail and stand there for a while to see who is the bravest birdie. Who do you think wins every time? We have bluejays, cardinals, chickadees, doves, flycatchers, goldfinches, house finches, […]
I’ve been learning a lot from reading ‘Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War’ by Edmund Wilson. All about Harriet Beecher Stowe and the ghostly apparitions that her husband Calvin saw throughout his life. About the real Lincoln, not the Carl Sandberg mashup of folksy stories. […]
In my role as literary executor of the late Bob Hay, I’ve been going through a bank box of notebooks. I’ve been thinking of publishing a selection of his poetry, especially the short pieces, with some of his sketches as illustrations. Here are three poems from a larger work called […]
Whenever I hear someone calling someone else a ‘thug,” I think of the line in ‘The Princess Bride’ when Inigo Montoya says to Fizzini: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Thugs were members of a secret criminal society called […]
I make the same two resolutions every year, even though I know I cannot keep them. The thing is to try. The first is never to be annoyed by the bad manners of others. It’s okay to deplore bad manners or even to respond with righteous anger, if that’s […]
When a family puts all their unwanted stuff out on racks and tables in the driveway, besides the bargains you might find on pillowcases and winter coats, you also get a glimpse into their lives — the Nordic Trak that Dad ordered from TV and never wound up using, the […]