Letters from the Village

Presbyograms

"Notes on Why I Write" will appear in Stymie in June.

"Books Unread" will appear in Feathered Flounder.

"Summer Postlude" will appear in Sea Stories in 2012.

03 May 2012

A Drab and Wretched Afternoon

Some days just can't be bothered to deal me an idyl with my grandchildren. On the other hand, seldom can I... [coming soon]

05 February 2012

Notes on Why I Write

Like the certainty of being hanged, a heart attack should concentrate one's mind. Yet I had failed for years to act... [more]

07 December 2011

Grampa and the Ku Klux Klan

It's time to come out. For way too long I've tried to cope by means of denial and aversion therapy, but I've finally come to accept that it's genetic, something that I can no more change than my need... [more]

30 September 2011

Surviving the Apocalypse

If the folklore's not apocryphal, during the war GIs in the ETO used baseball questions when they needed to test the authenticity of any ostensible American who didn't have the proper credentials. I'd have been shot as a German spy... [more]

11 September 2011

Tempest

It's the unofficial end of summer again, the week before Labor Day, the cusp of August and September. Even with herculean effort I can't summon the cranky and morbid mood... [more]

19 July 2011

Virus

I've just finished up several days of fighting a virus, if you can call my spineless response fighting. Its fever, cough, and gastrointestinal effects weren't all that spectacular... [more]

29 May 2011

Derailleur

"Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I demonstrated Arthur Clarke's Third Law—a couple of years before he posited it in 1973—when I first saw a derailleur-guided bicycle chain... [more]

27 February 2011

Bigger! Better!

Sixty-One

For most of the month cardinals and titmice have been singing for their territories, and in three weeks a new generation... [more]

07 February 2011

Now, less overwrought.

Bingo and the Super Bowl

My son-in-law Jeff invited me over for the Super Bowl, and mentioned that Bingo had died. The news of a family cat's death... [more]

09 January 2011

Bugs

As a geek who finds much of human contact enervating, but who has always been well-served by a small talent for manipulating symbols and by dogged... [more]

03 November 2010

Infernal Vermont

Of all the celebrities I've met, including Massachusetts Governor John A. Volpe, Speaker of the House Joseph W. Martin, Jr., Ben & Jerry, Dave Barry, Dick Cavett, and a couple... [more]

03 November 2010

Random Vermont

I've completed several pilgrimages to the spiritual center of yankeedom, Vermont, home of Frost, Solzhenitsyn, and THRUSH San Francisco satrap Ward Baldwin. Its culture... [more]

20 October 2010

Summer Postlude

By the end of August, summer is moribund; by the middle of September, truly done for. Summer the well-beloved is over... [more]

07 October 2010

My Life in Theater

In the technically truthful but deliberately misleading way that I tell people I worked on Wall Street with a stripper named Agnes... [more]

20 August 2010

August Wanes

In the road near my house lie the bloated stinking corpses of two possums who failed to comprehend the danger behind... [more]

29 June 2010

Another Solstice

It's a week past the summer solstice. There's a sense of a year barely under way suddenly being half gone, but no sense yet of it ending, as there is... [more]

13 June 2010

Frog

When I was ten I wanted to be a frog. Let me clarify that. I didn't actually want to be one. In school I was forced to choose and... [more]

03 June 2010

Karma

I believe it is good manners and good karma to give thanks, explicitly and formally—your choice how and to whom—for the memories... [more]

20 April 2010

Sleepers, Awake

One evening at bedtime Dad runs downstairs cradling one of his newborn twin daughters. He trips as he nears the bottom, the baby explodes out... [more]

13 March 2010

New! Improved!

Printer's Devil

Today, any damn fool can write and publish ephemeral crap on the internet, and spew out butt-ugly pages... [more]

27 February 2010

Evergreen

There are nights to remember, nights to live for. A family wedding on a viciously tropical July night. Supper at the beach, grilled zucchini and... [more]

10 February 2010

Cocasset Street

I was about six months old when my parents moved to Foxboro, a sleepy Boston suburb known outside of southeastern Massachusetts mainly for... [more]

28 December 2009

Attleboro Station

I freely confess that the railroad station in Attleboro, Massachusetts is one of my favorite places, though few people would call it beautiful, or even... [more]

13 December 2009

Early Gift

It's the Christmas season, though not yet at the solstice. The sun's going down, temperature is 27 degrees, with a stiffish Canadian wind, and we are not... [more]

29 October 2009

Playing With Matches

It's no wonder the Prometheus legend endures, when half the world, by virtue of their Y-chromosomes, are firebugs. Fireworks aficionados, backyard... [more]

23 September 2009

Jury Duty

I've read—so it must be true—that once upon a time a government career used to be considered gentlemanly and honorable. I myself dimly remember when politicians weren't... [more]

21 September 2009

Books Unread

Grace Bride was my fourth-grade teacher, ancient beyond my young power to reckon age (she was in fact 68). Her twin, Gertrude, inevitably known as Dirty Gertie... [more]

22 August 2009

Dog Days

Goldenrods have been blooming gaudy yellow for weeks, and now asters warn us that summer's almost over. We've had abnormally damp and cool weather through June... [more]

18 August 2009

Stereotype

I'm fond of stereotypes. There are many books that I can and do judge by their covers, preferring to risk missing an occasional gem if I can avoid... [more]

11 August 2009

Jigsaw Puzzle

I'm of an age at which profound and instant pheromonal attraction for the opposite sex—"the zeal of organs for each other," as Joseph Campbell puts it... [more]

15 June 2009

Proust Exonerated

Proust asserted that odors cause flashbacks. My contention that Proust had it wrong—that it's thinking of the past that triggers olfactory... [more]

21 May 2009

Marathon

What the critics say: "Thought it tried a little too hard to be clever" and "Doesn't say anything important to me."

28 April 2009

Nirvana

Seven o'clock, tail end of a hot April day. Quick survey of the estate: disappointingly scant dandelion crop, but a prodigious carpet... [more]

25 April 2009

Full Circle

It was shaping up to be one of the moments grandparents live for. My grandchildren had heard that their father was getting a flat-screen television, and they were beside... [more]

18 March 2009

Deaf or Blind?

One of my grandson's favorite games is to confront me with outrageous Hobson's choices. His latest was "Would you rather be eaten by ants or impaled on... [more]

09 March 2009

Watching Trains

For as far back as my memory goes, I'd crane and twist in my seat to look for a train as we passed railroad tracks on family car trips. Later, when I joined a roving gang... [more]

18 February 2009

Trout

I was playing one of my grandson's favorite games—with myself, not with him. He hits me with a question, often hypothetical, sometimes as fast... [more]

23 December 2008

Fences

It took a minute to dawn on me what a subtle historical sea-change is embedded in this line from an 1844 deed granting property in Massachusetts to my great-great-great-grandfather... [more]

09 August 2008

Station Days

As my wife, grandchildren, friends, ex-wife, and random people in the street are fond of pointing out, I am a strange man. One of many facts that elicits that observation is... [more]

09 July 2008

The Next Generations

Last Thursday, while my cousin and I were having coffee, we happened to talk about sensing the temper of the time and knowing when it was appropriate to pass the baton on to the... [more]

May 2008

The Howitzer and Other Lessons

It was a bad week. My granddaughter had a sheet of third grade spelling homework on which appeared... [more]

Reward

13 May 2012

I avoid interrupting a pair of lovebirds on the train platform. Perhaps my grasp of karma is faulty? What comes around is in-your-face human frailty and wickedness. An obese woman tows her morbidly bowlegged son to her car. I grimace and avert my eyes only to see the platform's crumbling, criminally lousy masonry. But: swifts chitter, rugosa roses bloom, and new anthills rise over the pavement's tar-sealed cracks.

Evening at East Junction

12 May 2012

In Cav's back yard the sun sets on our sea-dark wine. Contented, we banter, speculating on wildlife's total obliviousness to noisy lethal tractors. Calm dusky green envelops us, not early spring's tentative pale yellowy stuff, but the dense rich green of full-throttle photosynthesis. We are in a place and time that make a brief state of grace inevitable: a wood thrush sings in the tree above us. And we can see him.

May Day

01 May 2012

Crossing a street, one kind of person trots to acknowledge a stopped driver's consideration. The other kind seizes his right of way and slackens his swagger, taunting the delayed car. I see both as khaki-trousered teens traverse their high school campus. I memorize the laughing girl and boy holding hands who break into awkward skipping, oblivious to me, the huge elephant-grey pinfeathered beech, and the gentle rain.

Windfall

19 April 2012

It's a gift on a silver platter to my smug superior side, the dark part that so loves to despise cheesy brute pop culture and ignorance. Agape, I blink twice; no mistake. Right there on the convenience store's sugary slush machine a banner exhorts, "Guzzle for less." If only it were a simple case of competent marketers knowing that "guzzle" has no positive connotation whatsoever, and cynically pandering to our greed.

No Contest

14 April 2012

There's a perverse thrill in alternately whiffing scorched bone and the crayon scent of articulating paper: on one hand, slaughterhouse, on the other hand, comforting flashback to childhood. Add volatile solvents and adhesives; add easy workmanlike shop talk of #557 burrs. The dermatologist offers only a cauterizer's audible electric zap and nostril-tweaking charred flesh. For good times my dentist wins hands down.

Dandelion Time

10 April 2012

Dandelions resist man's attempted genocide. Every year, when we need it most, dandelions in gorgeous profusion reaffirm life. They protect my delicate theological sensibilities from the violence of trying to believe the literal Easter story, and obviate any need to entertain a metaphorical version. Failing its cockroach reincarnation, maybe my dead body's second-hand molecules will help push up fields of dandelions.

It Goes My Way

06 April 2012

It takes hours to yank out two hundred screen tacks with my needle-nose pliers, but I'm not insanely perched atop the step-ladder to do it. The online how-to suggests tensioning the new screen with a wedge-driven jig; my jury-rig works. It says trim the aluminum with a utility knife. Despite my intuition's frenzied warnings I risk it—elegant. We dine to the St. Matthew Passion, and I'm growing fonder of blueberries.

Estate Planning

24 March 2012

I was about fifteen when I bought my propane torch; Dad said that's what I'd need for some damn fool soldering I wanted to do. It served me well for igniting sketchy recalcitrant homemade fireworks, and it kept my tender bits at a safer distance. I made a couple of wedding rings with it, too, but it's been idle for twenty years now. My grandson just turned fifteen. With proper words of blessing I gave him the torch.

A Bad Start

03 March 2012

Ten degrees north of freezing. A guy at the train shivers in rapper shorts and light jacket. Cell chatter isn't enough for him; he thrusts with hockey small talk, I parry with baseball defense. I'm in no mood to chat, but the day is redeemed: a hawk crosses the tracks in a paralyzingly gorgeous glide just below the catenary. I lack the true birder's gestalt, can't even tell if it's a buteo or accipiter. I just gape.

More shorts...

Visuals

03 February 2012 — Seeds: Foliate Oak.

01 August 2011 — Three Hardware Photos: Otoliths.

16 January 2011 — "Lockwashers": Short, Fast, and Deadly.

26 August 2010 — "Twins": BluePrintReview.

2010 Gallery

2011 Gallery

2012 Gallery

Published

19 April 2012 — Shorts. " Vocational Education," " Hectocotylus," and "Camp Myles Standish" appear in Short, Fast, and Deadly.

14 April 2012 — A short "compression statement" is up in Matter Press Blog.

14 April 2012 — "Grampa and the Ku Klux Klan" appears in Front Porch Review.

12 February 2012— "Bingo and the Super Bowl" appears in Stymie online.

19 January 2012 — Shorts. "Little Things" appears in Apocrypha and Abstractions.

19 January 2012 — Shorts. " Thanksgiving" appears in Short, Fast, and Deadly.

15 January 2012 —"Southbound" appears in The Montucky Review.

25 December 2011 — "Nirvana Optimized," and other haiku.
"Drummer Boy" appeared on 25 December 2011 at Sabotage.
"Spy Cams" appeared on 24 March 2011 in Three Line Poetry.
"Stealth" appeared on 21 March 2011 in 7x20.
"January" appeared on 21 January 2011 in 7x20.
"Cold" appeared 18 January 2011 in 7x20.
"Pose" is in Cuento Magazine, 4 January 2011.
"Bitch, Bitch, Bitch" is up at the Winter 2010 Red Fez, and "Which Circle" is up at High Coup Journal (December 1, 2010).
"Sole Survivor" is in escarp, November 1, 2010.
7x20 published "Acme" and "Field" on October 1 and 5, 2010, respectively; and "Express" on 25 October 2010.
"Clothesline" appears in the August 2010 issue of High Coup Journal.
"Bank Street" appears in 7x20 (Twitter-based, don't blink: here and here).
"Alchemy" appears in the Winter 2010 edition (Issue 012) of The Writer's Eye Magazine.

14 November 2011 —"Surviving the Apocalypse" appears in Stymie online.

26 October 2011 — Shorts. "Wiffle Ball" appears in Camroc Press Review.

23 October 2011 — Shorts. "Cloudburst" appears in i98 of Short, Fast, and Deadly.

23 September 2011 — Shorts. "Regulars," "Drummer Boy," and "Echo" appear in Prick of the Spindle issue 5.3 as "Three Sundays."

17 September 2011 — "Printer's Devil" appears in Trachodon issue 3.

14 August 2011 — Shorts. "Smoke" appears in i88 of Short, Fast, and Deadly.

05 August 2011 — "Sixty-One" appears in BluePrintReview.

31 July 2011 — Shorts. "Power to the People" appears in i86 of Short, Fast, and Deadly.

04 July 2011 — "Derailleur" appears in Stymie online.

12 June 2011 — Shorts. "Children's Hour" appears in Short, Fast, and Deadly, i79.

04 June 2011 — "Attleboro Station" appears in Issue 1 of The Adroit Journal.

21 April 2011 — "Summer Postlude" is in Issue 2 of Philly Flash Inferno.

04 April 2011 — "Bugs" appeared briefly in Issue 7 of Barrier Islands Review, which to all appearances has ceased publication.

29 March 2011 — "Stereotype" appears in Magnolia's Press.

21 March 2011 — "Frog" is up at The Literary Burlesque.

20 February 2011 — Shorts. "Dialogue" is up at Short, Fast, and Deadly.

13 February 2011 — "My Life in Theater" appears in Journal of Microliterature.

01 February 2011 — "Osterville" and "Coincidence" are in Short, Fast, and Deadly's 2010 Anthology.

01 February 2011 — Foliate Oak published "Infernal Vermont" in the February 2011 issue.

31 January 2011 — "Another Solstice" appears in the Twenty-third Flash in the Pan (Tiny Lights online).

30 December 2010 — "August Wanes" appears in Prime Number Magazine.

25 December 2010 — Shorts. "Get a Life" and "Sting" are up at Camroc Press Review.

19 December 2010 — Shorts. "Coincidence" is in i54 of Short, Fast, and Deadly.

11 December 2010 — Shorts. "Tommy" appears in Magnolia's Press.

21 November 2010 — Shorts. "Vulture" is up at Journal of Microliterature.

01 November 2010 — "Cocasset Street" appears in Prime Number Magazine.

29 October 2010 — "Watching Trains" appears at The Writer's Eye Magazine.

13 October 2010 — "Too Much Time" at Short, Fast, and Deadly is the featured Short for October 12 at FictionDaily.

10 October 2010 — "Playing With Matches", orphaned by the demise of the late, lamented Writers' Bloc, appears in Issue 8 of Caper Literary Journal.

03 October 2010 — Shorts. "Too Much Time" is in i43 of Short, Fast, and Deadly.

24 September 2010 — Fall 2010 5x5 is in print, and "Dog Days" is in it.

11 July 2010 — "Sleepers, Awake" appears in the Twenty-first Flash in the Pan (Tiny Lights online).

04 July 2010 — "Karma" appears in the July 4th issue of Camroc Press Review.

14 June 2010 — "Evergreen" also appears in Issue 12 (June 2010) of Writers' Bloc.

15 May 2010 — Shorts. "Linotype" first appeared in Issue 22 of Short, Fast, and Deadly.

04 April 2010 — Shorts. "Donald" appears in Issue 17 of Short, Fast, and Deadly.

21 December 2009 — "Early Gift." Also appears in the Twentieth Flash in the Pan (Tiny Lights online).

15 August 2009 — "Jigsaw Puzzle." Also appears in the Nineteenth Flash in the Pan (Tiny Lights online). And yes, there's a typo there in the last word of the penultimate sentence—my fault.

25 May 2009 — "Nirvana." Also appears in Tiny Lights (Vol. 14, No. 2), August 2009, and in the Seventeenth Flash in the Pan (Tiny Lights online).

Links

Journals

Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative

Short, Fast, and Deadly. No attention span? No problem.

7x20 (Seven By Twenty). Fiction & poems that fit in a tweet.

BluePrintReview. An issue goes online when it feels complete.

Camroc Press Review. Submit something that makes us feel real emotions.

High Coup Journal: we're sick and goddamned tired of being told that a witty haiku "isn't a haiku."

Prime Number: A Journal of Distinctive Poetry & Prose

5x5. We like reading. We hope you do too.

Caper Literary Journal: Literature of the Speakeasy Aesthetic

Journal of Microliterature is an online and print journal of critically acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction

FictionDaily: Good stuff to read in places you wouldn't normally look.

escarp: A selective, Twitter-based review of brief poetry and prose.

Red Fez: a place for fresh, new, exciting and accessible art and prose.

Cuento Magazine is a twitter-based magazine, featuring micro fiction. We also present short-form poetry...

Trachodon: a dinosaur of a little magazine... born in the spirit of revisiting and renewing the old. Old ideas, old things, and old ways of working.

The Adroit Journal. A literary journal for charity.

Foliate Oak Literary Magazine... quirky writing that makes sense

Three Line Poetry. "Keep it simple, zen will follow"

Philly Flash Inferno: Our Hell is always open.

Otoliths: a magazine of many e-things.

Stymie: a journal of sport & literature.

Prick of the Spindle: A Quarterly Online Journal of the Literary Arts

Apocrypha and Abstractions: Flash Fiction Musings for The Literary Minded

Sabotage: Reviews of the Ephemeral

Sea Stories: Blue Ocean Institute's quarterly online journal of international ocean writing...

The Montucky Review: shorter, well written free verse and prose that moves us in some way.

Front Porch Review is a quarterly online literary magazine.

Feathered Flounder offers original literary writing by authors who are sixty and older.

Journals, defunct after publishing my work

Writers' Bloc (Rutgers)

The Writer's Eye Magazine

Barrier Islands Review

The Literary Burlesque

Magnolia's Press: A Literary 'Zine for the World

Bookstores

Providence, RI 02903: Cellar Stories Bookstore

Attleboro, MA 02703: Ugly Dog Books

Falmouth, MA 02540: Eight Cousins

Articles

"Not So Fast," by John Freeman. "Sending and receiving at breakneck speed can make life queasy; a manifesto for slow communication."

"Fifty Years of Simplicity as Style," by Mark Garvey. "Strunk and White taught us that clear thinking and clear writing go together."

"What Would Jane Do?," by James Collins. "How a 19th-century spinster serves as a moral compass in today's world.... Only she can so credibly show us that it is possible to have moderation and deep feeling, good dinners and good poetry."

"So Many Links, So Little Time," by John Horgan. "'When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning.' ...The multitasking that is enabled, and encouraged, by our laptops and hand-held devices is supposed to boost our productivity but often diminishes it."

"How to Raise Boys Who Read," by Thomas Spence.

"David Foster Wallace on Life and Work." "Adapted from a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace to the 2005 graduating class at Kenyon College."

"The Long Way Around," by Andrew Stark. "John Kay, the former director of Oxford's Business School, has an insight—a promising insight, as it happens. Often, Mr. Kay says in Obliquity, we can attain a desired goal only by pursuing it indirectly."

"Inspiration Revised," by Allegra Goodman. "Mining the unconscious can be dull. Get me rewrite."

05 September 2011 "What Killed American Lit.," by Joseph Epstein. "Nor will you read a word, in the pages of The Cambridge History of the American Novel, about...the deleterious effect that creative-writing programs have had on the writing of fiction."

11 October 2011 "'I' Is a Window To the Soul," by Brian Christian. "How inconspicuous words like 'we' and 'the' betray our emotions and affect our audience's perceptions." A review of James W. Pennebaker's The Secret Life of Pronouns.