Posted on Facebook, May 1, 2020: Where to start??? I spent the last part of February and much of March obsessively watching the numbers of positive Covid-19 cases go up, and the number of affected states and counties gradually increasing as well. Once it was clear that community spread had begun, I remember thinking
Read on »death
Review of Half a Life: a Memoir by Darin Strauss
From the back cover: In the last month of his high school career, just after turning eighteen, Strauss is behind the wheel of his father’s Oldsmobile, driving with friends, having ‘thoughts of mini-golf, another thought of maybe just going to the beach.’ Then, out of the blue: a collision that results in the death of
Read on »Let’s Take the Long Way Home: a Memoir of Friendship by Gail Caldwell
Yesterday morning, I woke around 4am and couldn’t get back to sleep. By 445am, I’d decided to get up and start my next book. I’d first heard of Let’s Take the Long Way Home in late summer or early fall, on an episode of the Books on the Nightstand podcast, in which Michael Kindness gave
Read on »FreeVerse: A fragment, or draft
Just got this into my head and wanted to “jot it down,” might try to expand it more later, or might not. A year ago tonight, my mother passed away.In the Eastern Time Zone, it’s tomorrow,but here in Kansas, it was, it’s still, today. Imagine the many words we couldn’t saywill be fiery red flowers
Read on »FreeVerse: Still trying to decide on a title
Only a few hours after my mother died on October 14, 2009, I got up during the night and began writing this poem. I added to it on October 16, but then didn’t really touch it until last week. Then, I decided to type it up on the computer, maybe do some editing as I
Read on »FreeVerse: A Box, A Life
This is from a post I originally published on my blog at MySpace. (I checked the other day, and apparently I haven’t logged into my MySpace account since October 2008. Jeff didn’t know how that could be right, but I know it’s been a LONG, LONG TIME, and I know how the months fly by
Read on »Of Paper, and Its Work
For weeks now, Jeff has had piles of paperwork and folders set aside in an area of our bedroom, waiting for me to sort through them and determine what can be recycled. This morning, after sleeping in, I woke to a few inches of snow, which immediately pushed away any ambition I might have had
Read on »It’s been 8 days; do I feel sad enough?
Not long after midnight on October 14, my mother quietly passed away into the next world. I spent hours on the phone with people — family, and the funeral director, and various nursing home and hospice staff — and got the arrangements made, and I flew to Boston early last Friday. I spent some time
Read on »Something about age eight
Last evening after supper, I was alone in the house putting away clean dishes, thinking. Grandma was outside on the patio watching Jeff and the boys toss the football around the backyard. I was drying things and putting them in their places, then loading the dirty supper dishes in the dishwasher, starting to fill it
Read on »Violence then, violence now
While I was doing some housecleaning yesterday and listening to Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, a number of things I’ve recently seen and heard started swirling through my head, and spinning themselves together. I wish I had time to write a proper essay, but I’m afraid it might have more in common with a
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