Suprise Me

I used to hate the short, dark days of December. I’d sink into them. Sulk. Play the Blues. Then I spent one New Years in Iceland. It was dark but for two hours of twilight midday. Two white swans floated on the placid pond in Reykjavik. Time passed slowly. We sipped Scotch at 6. Huddled… Read More

Wisdom in the Weeds When I retired friends asked me what I would do with all my free time. ”Oh,  I don’t know,”  I told them,  “probably just more of the same things I enjoy – theater,  travel, tennis.” ”Why don’t you try something new,  try gardening,” one friend suggested,  “it’s great physical exercise and surprisingly… Read More

He aimed and started shooting ... I found the whole practice terrifying. Read More

A recent immigrant prepares for his first test at his new high school. Read More

Little by little, I’m thinning out my collection of books. Only books I have loved and respected can stay. It doesn’t matter if they’re ones I plan to read again. I might not. But I want to be able, when I walk past and see their titles, to feel at least the ghost of a… Read More

In the fall of 1976, I lied on an application in order to get a job as a janitor at Massachusetts General Hospital. Read More

That is what I thought of with the Retrospect Topic ‘Changing Times’ – not the clocks to be moved forward but the 1960s and then beyond. I was 14 when Bob Dylan’s song ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ was first released and it foretold for me, it prepared me for, my coming of age challenges… Read More

He marched into the high school and asked to be directed to "the headmaster's office." Read More

Reunion A few months ago I wrote about three places,  each of which I can claim as a home town.  (See Parkchester, Celebrate Me Home,  The Lady with the Torch,  Kente Cloth) I was born in Charleston, SC yet for most of my adult life I’ve lived on Manhattan’s eastside.  But the east Bronx neighborhood of… Read More

On the central question of this prompt: Can I separate the art from the artist? I guess my answer is "sometimes." Read More