Pandemic humor. What makes it funny?
Read MoreThe decision seemed trivial. Nick and I were cleaning out my parent’s farmhouse after they died. Only my mother’s piano was left, a big clumsy thing with pock-marked and tuneless keys. Phil, the caretaker, couldn’t find anyone to take it. We quietly stared at it together until Phil finally said, “let’s burn it up.”
Read MoreDear Publishers, I am writing to request a special type of subscription. I’m willing to pay full price but please only send me every other issue. The time commitment of a weekly New Yorker would be beyond my grasp and I don’t want to throw half of them out. People Magazine, I can handle its…
Read MoreThe afternoon sun can be cruel for those who care about tidiness, its shallow-angled rays highlighting each individual dust mote, both on the ground and in the air. However, I find peace in knowing that a perfectly clean house is impossible. This same sun can be merciless for those who care about aging. Driving east…
Read MoreStories require a setting and a few workable details to set the mood. Often this is weather-related (“it was a dark and stormy night…”), but here is my sure-fire suggestion to set a scene and provoke a mood. Add a fly. And give him human characteristics. In his essay The Supremacy of the Housefly, Twain…
Read MoreDear Peg, I am writing to thank you for saving my mother’s life, not in terms of death and dying, but in the sanity sense of the word. She clung to your 1960 cookbook, The I Hate to Cookbook like a life raft, that slim volume always right next to the kitchen telephone. The…
Read MoreNot that there was any pitched battle for my loyalties, but I have to say that the hexagon is my favorite geometric shape. I first became enamored in biochemistry when introduced to the basic building block of the carbon ring, illustrated as a hexagon of carbon atoms with other molecules hanging off of them. In…
Read MoreA Harsh Reality I found the guinea pig nestled in the back corner of the linen closet. He had escaped from his cage a couple of days before, at least that’s when somebody noticed he was gone, because my brother had lost interest in his pet. My mother organized a search party. He stared up…
Read More1960s It was one of those in-between summers. I had outgrown sleep-away camp and wasn’t old enough to be a camp counselor, so my mother had to patch together activities to keep me occupied. Typing class was the solution. Even though I had no occasion to use a typewriter, I didn’t question the wisdom of…
Read MoreI was at the podium and you were sitting in the front row when I heard you gasp. Some may not have heard it, others thought it was nothing more than a quick intake of breath. I am going to call it a gasp because it changed my life. You validated me as a writer.…
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