Fiction, Writing, Articles, Essays, Reviews.
Lately I’ve been thinking about a character, Adam, from CLEAN BREAK. He suffered from a gambling addiction, ended up in a rehab center, lost his family, was now living with his parents and trying to get his life in order. But it was hard. He relapsed. He was in debt and in trouble and heartbroken. I had so much empathy for him. I knew him, this figment from my imagination. From CLEAN BREAK:...
Plan ahead if it pleases, but you can see only as far as the next turn you take. One turn and then another. Which way at the fork, how to act, try not to look behind. You alone decide. Under blazing sun through drenching rain over deepening snow against gusting winds. Across concrete sidewalks and rickety bridges and endless asphalt. One turn and then another. Shoved this way, pulled that, and...
Dear White People: White is the status quo. White is the norm. White rules. White perspective is assumed to be universal and is imposed on everyone. White supremacy is a system we are all socialized into from the moment we are born. White schools are better than Black schools. White neighborhoods are better than Black neighborhoods. White health care is better than Black health care. White wages ...
(from a work in progress) The water is flat as glass which he shatters with each stroke, his arms operating like mistimed pistons, his strokes short and choppy. His legs barely muster a kicking motion and his feet hang low like sinking weights. He breathes in awkward gasps. He gulps mouthfuls of water. His splashing and coughing upset the silent morning. It is the start of a long June day, the...
It’s not a good look these days at the Food and Drug Administration. Former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams was quoted in Forbes saying the “quickest path” to herd immunity against COVID-19 in many U.S. communities is “organizational vaccine mandates, but lack of FDA licensure leaves schools, colleges, businesses in a legal quandary.” In other words, organizations that might mandate the...
A friend recommended The Father to me, with words of caution: it’s hard to watch. He was right. But hard to watch doesn’t mean don’t watch. In this case it means the film is so powerful, devastating, brilliant, and so close to home that the discomfort I experience is illuminating, even reassuring: I am not alone. I watched this film about a man struggling with dementia because I too had a father...
This year’s ESPN Wimbledon coverage included a DraftKings desk. A couple of hosts chattered as if they knew about tennis, but their real message was about placing bets on tennis. There are plenty of options for those who like to gamble. You’re not limited to betting on whether Djokovic will win or what round Federer will make it to; now you can place what are called proposition bets—or...
I’m not a big user of social media. I gave up on Twitter a few years ago. Occasionally I’ll share one of my blog posts on Facebook or comment on a friend’s post. I don’t pay much attention to my LinkedIn presence since I’m not networking or building my brand. I’ve never used Instagram or TikTok or any of the other social media apps I don’t even know exist. But there’s one social media...
Some writers plagiarize, others borrow freely, and all are inspired by the work of others. I recently rewatched a favorite scene from The Sopranos (Season 1) when Tony is taking his daughter Meadow to visit colleges. They have a heart-to-heart in the car. She’s on to her dad and his real line of business, but he won’t admit it. Later in the episode,, while she’s meeting with the...
I think of you on July 9, and today I was digging through my box of family artifacts and remembering that period of time we were writing letters to each other. I might have been recently graduated from college. I’m not sure how we got started, but in a few of my letters I was trying to explain some life decisions I’d made. Where to live, what kind of job to take, some relationship matter. Maybe...
Here’s my relationship to photography these days: I point my phone and tap my screen. With reckless impunity, I tap and tap and tap. The photos get stored in the gallery app on my phone, then backed up to the cloud, and every once in a while I scroll through my gallery and cull the photos that are poor quality or meaningless or redundant. The rest stay in the gallery where I’ll see them the next...
Someone had left this slim book in my Little Free Library and I snatched it when I saw on the cover the name William Styron, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sophie’s Choice and a devastating memoir about his battle with depression among other works. The three tales in “A Tidewater Morning” are fictionalized accounts from his youth. In Shadrach, a 99-year old former Black slave...
Twenty-five years ago today we rented a truck and hired two strapping 20-year-olds and moved from a city apartment into our house on a tree-lined street in the suburbs. At the time we likely thought of this as our starter house. It wasn’t big or flashy, but it had character and charm. For the first few years we used the bedroom on the first floor and rarely even went up to the second floor, so...
Robert survived the plane crash, walked away, and disappeared for two days before he was found, waking up and returning to himself only when the police knocked on the hotel room door he was occupying with a woman he did not recognize. The diagnosis was dissociative fugue: a rare psychological disorder characterized by a complete loss of identity and unplanned, unintentional wandering, caused by...
First of all, great title: “The Index of Self-Destructive Acts.” It refers to a baseball metric that measures “the total number of hit batsmen, wild pitches, balks and errors by a pitcher, per nine innings.” There’s a bit about baseball in this novel, but the focus is on other types of self-destructive acts committed by the novel’s cast of characters: infidelity, financial...
I’m on my front lawn installing a wire cage around an aspen sapling to keep the grazing deer off the sweet new leaves. Less than four feet tall, I hope the tree will make it. A dark sedan pulls up in front of my house. I stay with my work for a moment, bending back tines to connect the circle. I look up and walk over and lean on the open passenger window. It’s Jean from across the street, my...
This maze of cracked boulders the size of houses and jagged shards of sandstone like the tables of giants pitched at awkward hard angles. You’d best be nimble with all four limbs and your feet and hands because you’ll climb and crawl and mount and squish and wiggle through tight passages under and over a moonscape of rock. Up and down and across holding your balance facing one decision and then...
In honor of all fathers . . . 1. Show Up Regardless of whether you live with them or not, a father’s job is to show up whenever possible and be a positive force in the lives of your children. My kids are young adults now and I’ve been fortunate to be present for most of their journey from infancy to adulthood. You’ve got to make time for them. 2. Be interested What you’re interested in is not...
Business Concept: Memory Lane Amount of Investment Requested: $3 Million to complete the algorithm and to fund initial marketing efforts. Business Problem: In the event a couple decides to part ways, conflict often arises not only in how physical and financial assets are divided, but also in how memory assets should be divvied up, leading to protracted and painful negotiations and additional...
