Are We Still Having “Fun”?

Are We Still Having “Fun”?

I spent a weekend in Manhattan back in the fall of 2018 with two old college friends: Leslie, a documentary filmmaker who’s lived in Paris for many years, and Bonnie, a recently-retired high school English teacher living on a cattle ranch in the Kansas Flint Hills and...
Watching My Trees Grow

Watching My Trees Grow

I like to think of them as my trees, two sibling white birches rising out of the bank of Thompson Lake in Poland, Maine. They arch towards the water, just a few yards beyond the screen porch from which I’ve watched them grow since their infancy. I probably shouldn’t...
Subway Diary # 2: The Underground Banjo Player

Subway Diary # 2: The Underground Banjo Player

This is the second in a series of Subway Diary entries: snapshots of life’s noteworthy experiences underground in NYC. The events described here took place in late January as I zig-zagged my way around Manhattan on crowded subways before COVID-19 restricted my ability...
Subway Diary #1

Subway Diary #1

A lot of people these days bitch about our New York City subways–with reason. The MTA’s finger-in the-dike campaign to repair our antique system continually scrambles the system and peoples’ lives: They’re late for work; they can’t get home when they’re weary...