Rediscovered this relic written when I was a college sophomore, when it seemed we were all writing poetry. The crowded street parts it way as a young boy finds his way through a dreamlike world of games and candy Down warped steps he goes his god to meet a nickel in and then retreat to… Continue reading Theme and Variation on a Pinball Machine in Slow Motion
Author: Buzz Proffit
Venom and Velocity
My mother moved in mysterious ways… My mother had a thing for snakes and tornados. Somewhat similar in shape, one horizontally inclined, and the other displaying vertical superiority dropping from clouds above. My mother knew snakes, the garden variety which lived tucked away in the stone fence of our rural Massachusetts’ home. Tornadoes, on the… Continue reading Venom and Velocity
Remembering Desmond Tutu, 1931-2021
As a high school principal, I often sought out smaller alternative gatherings and workshops that dealt with building meaningful communities, whether in neighborhoods, schools or corporations, rather than attending the larger conferences and conventions for educators and school leaders. At one such event offered by the Bali Institute for Global Renewal in 2006, one hundred… Continue reading Remembering Desmond Tutu, 1931-2021
Planet of the Apes
Evening entertainment in an Alaskan Arctic village during the summer of 1972 was scarce; I usually played my guitar or read. So, when the mail plane dropped off a feature film, even though it had been released four years earlier in the Lower Forty-eight, I made sure I got myself to the old Quonset hut… Continue reading Planet of the Apes
Open Door Klinic
In my prior post I featured the late photographer Stephen Cysewski and the influence his images of Alaska in the 1970s had on my writing. His photo of the Open Door Klinic at the top of this post became the memory trigger for this excerpt from Hardship Alaska. Here I’m recalling the second of two incidents… Continue reading Open Door Klinic