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  • Memoir,  Photo Essay,  Poetry

    ‘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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  • Essays,  Memoir

    READINGS: “Stormtroopers & Grandmothers”

    The balls of his black pupils stare at me intently. They are oddly echoed by the round marble of what looks like a self-shaved head, its yellow stubble hinting at what must once have been luxuriant blonde hair. Moments later, I have second thoughts about my diplomacy as lyrics to the band’s “Speak English or Die” batter the room.

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  • Art,  Memoir

    SHORT/STORY: ‘I can see clearly now’

    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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  • Memoir,  Video

    A LOOK BACK: 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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  • Essays,  Memoir,  Songs

    IT’S A MOTHER’S DAY THING: One Rant, One Song, One Memoir

    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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  • Essays,  Memoir

    ‘WHAT IF YOU KNEW HER?’: The Protest 7 Years after the Kent State Massacre 50 Years Ago

    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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  • Memoir,  Songs,  Video

    IT’S A LAMB THING: 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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  • Memoir,  Video

    Ten Years After: Remembering the Faces from Upper 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.

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  • Memoir,  Video

    SONGS OF COMFORT, SONGS OF HOME: “Till There Was You”

    They were young idealists picking up trash across America. One of them could nail a tune from "The Music Man." (NOT "76 Trombones.") Enter a ponytailed, cigar-chomping Cincinnati jazz pianist in a Parmesan-wedge of a club in the hazardous part of town.

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  • Memoir,  Poems

    The Christmas People Put this Hat On Me

    The Christmas People put this hat on me. A bright red hat with thick white fur. And a big ball that blocks one eye. So it begins.

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  • Essays,  Memoir

    What Have You Done With All the Jerks?

    What do you do when people act in a totally, unexpected, strange, unnerving manner in an age when civility is in the ER hooked up to an IV?

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  • Essays,  Memoir

    May You Find Your Inner PEZ Once More

    A few words to our PEZ Family as we go our separate ways. And may you be full of PEZ again some day!

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About This Site

Welcome to The StoryIsTheThing, featuring poetry, essays, photo-essays, video & more. The site is a production of writer, editor, multimedia producer, and itinerant musician Douglas John Imbrogno. Its companion site is AmpMediaProject.com, where we do all the heavy lifting of moving pixels around. REACH ME via the Contact page or email: douglasjohnmartin AT icloud.com

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