Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2013. 

         We are in lockdown.

            The police are on campus investigating an issue.

           … Read full post »

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.  

~Henry David Thoreau 

You know, about the Dream. The American Dream: Justice, Freedom, Equality? Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness?/… Read full post »

Panic is a sudden desertion of us, and a going over to the enemy of our imagination.  ~Christian Nevell Bovee  

I  know. I haven't been writing or making rounds. I've been AWOL… Read full post »

Every little thing gonna be alright...

That is, if you are not polishing a pomegranate on your denim pants in the Finest Supermarket in Kabul, Afghanistan, or hunting for the ripest mango at the outdoor marketplace in  Dera Ghazi K… Read full post »

Which may very well be the sun. It may be the crisp breeze that ruffles the crinkled sheers in my dining room windows. (Which means they've been opened!) 

It may be the receipt of a text message from Max, telling me the plane has safely hit the tarmac… Read full post »

Can you imagine tumbling over this in a wooden barrel?

A seven hour drive takes us along the undulating banks of the Mohawk River and the Erie Canal, detouring at Charlie the Butcher in Buffalo for beef-on-wek, and up to Niagara Falls, Ontario, where I hadn't before been/… Read full post »

It melts in your mouth, a smooth and silky texture. It rolls along your tongue and awakens your senses. It makes you giddy with its seratonin-like, feel-good molecules. It can be both sweet and bitter. Hershey, Godiva, Lindt, Valrhona. USA, Belgian, Swiss, French. But a chocol… Read full post »

What's going on here is that the magnolia has come around.

Free-falling fluid, glassy strands race to the earth as if they mean business. Where they meet the pavement they spark and twinkle in an encore of sorts. (Like we've not noticed enough.) The grand finale before puddling at v… Read full post »

She was out in the night, every weekend, to mitigate the pain. Ameliorated by stentorian rock, booze, measured white lines and dexies, smokes and contortionist, non-stop dancing. In the mid-eighties, in her mid-twenties, this is what she did. (Pretty much all her twenties, in… Read full post »

In honor of National Women's History Month, this piece is dedicated to the late, great Ms. Ella Fitzgerald, the First Lady of Song.

It is a breezy spring afternoon in 1952, Mama walks across the Court Street bridge, her pleated skirt ruffling in the wind. Daddy pulls up to h… Read full post »

Or in the park. Or anywhere the warmth of the sun and cool, breezy air conspire to liberate those weighty, astrictive burdens carted about all week in your worn, leather satchel. (Gosh, that arm must be sore.) You might want to swap the satchel for something light, like a crisp… Read full post »

And Backwoods Betty, telling me about this (in a hushed tone, opens her sleek MacBook, pulls up the video; someone else told her, she says, at work, at that office in the Great White North, the back country, shh; I can barely contain myself; whoa sis, and you heard this where?/… Read full post »

I watched my thirteen year old son leave the house yesterday with a semi-automatic NightProwler SA rifle swung over his shoulder, and a Stinger P36 pistol stuffed in his pocket, and I felt what the street looked like: muddy, gritty and grappling with uneasiness, the somberness of being… Read full post »

She's on the flyway... the muse, the sprite. Like an Osprey migrating northward, she'll be soaring in by mid-afternoon. She'll be LOUD. She'll be EXPLOSIVE. She'll be BIG. AMPLIFIED. DYNAMIC. *Whoosh.*

Her overstuffed bag will land heavy… Read full post »

And this:  “Sleep Deprivation Increases Risks of Strokes, Heart Attacks”—a headline that Coyote Prime posted on his blog, which is an extraction of written passages, stories, aphorisms, and any other newsworthy, noteable, quotable mate/… Read full post »

Here it is, two full months into a new year and I’m reassessing my resolution made on the first day of 2011. Perhaps the idea was too lofty, but with rebels fighting for freedom around the globe, voices rising in solidarity, and the Oscars behind us, I’m going to continue… Read full post »

(This is a repost of a piece I wrote last November for a regular Friday music column I author at another blog.)

It's late afternoon and night has already fallen. You stroll in after work, toss your bag on the mudroom bench, kick off your high heels, hang your camel-hair… Read full post »

Vaporizd into thin air; 

rubbd out lik a Mafioso rat by robust and ruthlss punching. 

Bginning with th uppr right arm, 

followd by its middl and lowr branchs, pummld colorlss, 

lik th middl C that I pr… Read full post »

You thought it was over didn't you? Your week dragged on and you thought the magic had ended. Poof. Kaput. Now you're looking for it, you want it back.

You've arrived at this point, at this very juncture, this Friday, feeling like all life had been sucked out of you. Leather-f/… Read full post »

I've so many magical things for you today. Really. Little magical tricks. And yes, that illustration up there—the one that turns the world on its side—is one of them. But you're going to want to see all the magic here today. I promise.

My son penciled this sketch/… Read full post »

It wasn't always all chocolate hearts and roses. It wasn't always so romantic. The Romans had a way about them, and legend has it that in the third century—when public showing of pagan rituals hadn't yet been outlawed—during the days from February 13th through the 15th, the Romans… Read full post »