BOOKS OF OUR LIVES: Fifty Years after reading ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’
Looking back more than fifty years after my first encounter with "100 Years of Solitude," after a bookshelf encounter stirs some strong family memories.
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‘CRAZY DAYS’: ‘The Shot’
“You know ... ” the doctor says, leaning to speak into the young man’s ear as the song proceeds. “The bodhran was first used by Irish clans as a battle drum. It gave a steady rhythm for Celtic warriors facing conflicts. Warrior time.”
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Memoir
A great lake filled with memories & negative ions
Lakes and oceans talk to us in a language we don't understand with our cognition, but with our bodies. To be more specific, with our very cells. You might say it is the soothing language of negative ions. Here, try it ...
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NOTATIONS: ‘Tick-tick-tick …’
This quarter-century-old guestbook notation, scribbled and illustrated one cold February day on the grounds of a Buddhist monastery in the West Virginia hills, remains true, after all these years.
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Memoir
Looking Down on Paris, 30 years gone
Exiting the spartan, Napoleonic era apartment building I have sort of broken into, I head for the highest hill in Paris. I am intent on seeing what I can see this Christmas Eve in Paris, 1986, while my Moroccan fellow traveler snores toward Christmas Day, as we take a break from helping build a Buddhist temple in a Parisian suburb.
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Memoir
Dear General de Gaulle …
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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Memoir
‘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…
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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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CRAZY DAYS: “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…
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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…
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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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