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A Time of Killing Panic

Jan. 11, 2018 Something that still gives me shivers years later—killing a mouse with a broom. The fear and murderousness that came over me—it was like demon possession, like some other personality jumping into me and taking control. The things I yelled seemed to come from someone else.

A Tradition Reconsidered

Jan. 6, 2017 I know this won’t be popular, but IMO, sport hunting should be considered repugnant. All emotional justifications for hunting need to be weeded out of our culture, much the way we have (for the most part) uprooted our old romantic attachments to the practice of slavery.

Bad Pharmacy

Jan. 14, 2022 [ Image: pastedGraphic.png ] I go to the pharmacy tonight to pick up a prescription. The drive-thru is closed, so I mask-up and head inside. I take my place in a line running halfway up one long aisle, the longest traffic jam I’ve ever seen

Goobye, Jim Carroll

Jan. 10, 2022 I lost a lifelong friend this past week—Jim Carroll. Some of you also knew him in our school years, and some of you met him here on Facebook. He was wise, thoughtful, very intelligent, kind, funny, a lover of music, a person whose appreciations were infectious—

Airplane for the Mind

Jan. 20, 2023 This was a one of my favorite places to write. The NYC Public Library on 42nd Street. The big, stimulating quiet of it: something between silence and a steady thrum. In other words, an irregular noise of humans being present, but each chair screech, pencil drop, cough,

The New Creek

Beaver’s whole family watched as the long boy ?? eased up to the embankment, ramming it, tearing up a fat slab of sod. “Al right, Floyd!” Beaver’s voice was louder than the truck engine. Even the echo could be heard. It was a moist Saturday morning. The mother and

The Benefactor

Beaver always said the reason the dam washed out was Jack Schmidt. Jack was the man he hired to build the pipeworks that ran through the dam for draining excess water. They consulted a couple of engineers, found them too elaborate, and got busy doing it their own way. Beaver

Selling in Arkansas

Letter to Rob, Nov. 3, 2005 When I was selling cookware in Arkansas one Christmas break during college I hit a streak of success. For about four days in a row almost every girl I called on bought a set. Ordinarily it was hard to sell even one set a

My Friend Jimmy Carroll

Jan. 22, 2022 My Friend Jimmy Carroll Jim and I were boys together in a country valley in Missouri during the 1960s. For several years in grade school we were a trio of playmates: Jimmy, my brother Billy and myself, years I have always remembered as a perfect part of