Untuned You sit unused under the archway between here and there next to the couch, also black. Don’t know why I avoid you so, I love you so and when we’re together we’re harmoniously transformed. Yet, something’s off. It must be the river, its dampness lingers within you sliding along the skin of your tendons,… Continue reading Untuned
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Flesh Eater
“The trouble with a secret life is that it is very frequently a secret from the person who lives it and not at all a secret for the people he encounters.” —James Baldwin, Another Country That’s how James Baldwin describes the fallacy of believing he is living a secret life and how it’s only a… Continue reading Flesh Eater
Wonders of the Invisible World
Back in January I posted a piece about my mother, Venom and Velocity. I wrote about her fascination with tornadoes and what seemed to be her uncanny ability to attract animals, including snakes, and in the most unlikely places. That got me thinking about my 8th great grandmother, Susannah North Martin, who was three times… Continue reading Wonders of the Invisible World
First Communion
My parents had me christened in the Congregational Church across from town hall on the edge of the village commons in the town of Lunenburg, Massachusetts. The church was where I performed in my first piano recital in the fellowship hall below the sanctuary. I probably played something out of John Thompson’s Modern Piano Course… Continue reading First Communion
Hold Your Breath
I went to a small choral music school, Westminster Choir College, during the late 1960s. I enjoyed walking into town leaving the campus and turning right onto Hamilton Street until it became Wiggins. When I passed by Princeton Cemetery, I’d love picking up a stick and running it across the iron fence bars as I… Continue reading Hold Your Breath
Theme and Variation on a Pinball Machine in Slow Motion
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
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