The email arrived one day recently in my in-box from Glasgow, Scotland: Did you know, it said, that a letter your friend Sister Mary Pellicane sent to Charles de Gaulle is on sale on eBay in London? Um ... no. What?
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The Art of the Song Lyric
The hand-transcribed song lyric considered as a work of art. Bouncing around Paris and the volcanic heartland of Gaul before easy access to printers and scanners, you had to make do when you wanted to travel with lyrics to the songs you hoped to sing.
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‘I Am Too Serious’
'Hey, here you go. What's your name? Where'd you serve?' He nods in thanks. Stuffs the bag into a pocket. Tom. That's his name. He takes off his black knit cap. Syria. Iraq. 'A shell took off part of the top of my head.' I wince. He points to a jagged line. 'The Med Evac was the best. Saved my life.' He's homeless. 'I sleep in the park.'
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“When ‘Frankenstein’ Came to Town”
“Listen to this!” say Tommy. He shifts the Les Paul to his lower back, rock star-like. “Edgar Winter,” he says, almost reverently. “Johnny’s brother ..."
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“Stormtroopers & Grandmas”
The balls of his black pupils stare at me intently, oddly echoed by the round marble of a self-shaved head. Moments later, I have second thoughts about my diplomacy as “Speak English or Die” batters the room.
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‘What Does the Past Look Like?’
A more Catholic grade school name you could / not conjure — Our Lady of the Rosary. Where, on a / bright Saturday afternoon, I'm surprised to find / an orange traffic cone propping open a first-floor / door. And so, as one will do when invited by the / cosmos to stroll the hallways where you once / walked a half-century gone, I walk in.
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Seeing Red in Downtown Cincinnati
When the Opening Day parade for the Cincinnati Reds 2022 season snaked through downtown Cincinnati more was going on than it might at first seem.
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‘I can see clearly now’
I had to get out of town. Get lost, evade the race of human beings. Seek out geese and turtles, beavers and blue herons. Gunned the car 50 miles per hour, 70, 80. Slowed to make the left turn. Parked on white gravel near the trail head. The way forward was barred by a long rusted gate, hinged and anchored to a chest-high concrete post. Only footfalls allowed hereafter.
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When Elephants Walked in West Virginia
You may not believe it. I would well understand should you not. The querulous mind dances lightly upon the phrase—and then rejects it utterly. There have never been elephants in West Virginia. But you would be wrong. Oh, so wrong.
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One Rant, One Song, One Memoir for Mother’s Day
She had the greenest of thumbs, a bright intellect and dreamed of being the kind of writer that Toni Morrison, a hometown contemporary, became. What to do when your mother — in the late stages of Alzheimer's — is moving mutely toward her departure from this life?
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‘WHAT IF YOU KNEW HER?’: The Protest 7 Years after Kent State
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Kent State shootings, in which four students were gunned down on May 4, 1970. As a student journalist, I profiled a protest seven years later on the Kent campus, where the memories remained raw and more than a thousand converged to protest.
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Sheepish Thanks to an Old Friend
I spent the day before my birthday making a ridiculous music video that shows only lambs, sheeps and rams for three minutes. Here's why
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Who Gets My Beloved Guitars if Covid Gets Me
Dear Family: I come to you on a matter of some urgency. That is to say, the disbursement of my three beloved guitars, should 'The Rona' get me. This is who should become the adoptive parents of Michele, Gilda, and Blue ...
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“The Key To My Grandfather’s House”
Take a trip to Italy in spirt and in solidarity during this time of global pandemic and lockdown. What unites us is that we are all immigrants of one kind or another. Here is one family's tale out of Calabria. What's yours?
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Remembering the Faces of Miners Lost at Big Branch
It is has been ten years since the Upper Big Branch mine Disaster in West Virginia, which killed 29 miners, from their 20s to their 60s. Here is a video remembrance of their faces, as still-grieving families brace once more for Don Blankenship to rub salt in their wounds.
