Apple Blossom School has a nice ring to it, as does the Orchard View School at its side. The nearby Tree House Hollow pre-school, with…
Posts published in “Essays”
My parents were both active duty World War II. My mom was a Marine when she conceived me. My dad was a Navy Corpsman. When I was little, my really nasty paternal grandmother told me that my mom had me in order to get out of the military. When my parents divorced, I went to live with my mother and her family in Chicago, which didn’t go well. My grandfather, Eddie Carr, had run a speakeasy and was a straight up mobster. I was told that “your grandpa, Eddie, is sleeping at the bottom of the Calumet canal with his friends.” That turned out not to be true… he had escaped to Pennsylvania and had lived and died under an assumed name.
In 1969 Curtis Knight was still recording at PPX Studios on West 55th St., just off Broadway in Manhattan. Jimi Hendrix had left Curtis’ band,…
I have my piano tuned once a year. I used to have the beauty tuned twice a year, but that was when a good tuning cost sixty dollars and I was making much more money than I make now.
Sanford Dorbin, who died May 27, 2014, will be honored in the jazz-poetry program “Sanford Fare Well” next Wednesday, May 27, 2015. It commemorates his…
For fascinating listening there is “The Great Influenza” by John Barry. It’s available from the County Library and provides hours of informative material on a…
Her name was Cocoa. She spelled it like the beverage, not Jane Goodall’s gorilla. She looked Ethiopian with her cafe con leche complexion, high cheekbones, and yellowish brown eyes—most of the women at the party were Ethiopian. However, Cocoa was from Senegal. She had the poise and the figure of a young woman in her early 20s. He was stunned to discover she was seventeen—the same age as the high school seniors to whom he taught biology.
Good friends Don and Misty are coming up to Bieber for a few April days before we road trip north together. Don is Portuguese and…
A friend recently sent me a link to a short movie about a high school art teacher in St. Paul Minnesota whose students are recent arrivals from other countries, refugees from military conflicts. Many of the students barely speak English, so this teacher has devised fun and creative ways to explore color theory without needing much language for the learning.
When we feel gratitude, we give ourselves the gift of concentrating on what's important, and when we share our gratitude, it helps others feel gratitude,…
It was an early spring day and I sat in my dentist's waiting room. The only magazine that looked even half interesting proved to be…