Volume IV, Issue 1

While speaking recently with Daniel Chauche I was reminded of the short poem, Antigonish, written by William Hughes Mearns in the early 20th Century:

Yesterday, upon the stair / I met a man who wasn’t there / He wasn’t there again today / I wish, I wish he’d go away…

Only with Daniel, of course, I… »

The December 2009 edition of the Archives of Ophthalmology reported an explosion in the incidence of myopia during the past thirty years.  In 1971-72, twenty-five percent of Americans aged 12-54 had myopia. By 1999-2004, the number had jumped to 42 per cent. We are becoming nearsighted. The big picture is increasingly out of focus…. »

The building had the air of student rental, with a notion of cleanliness a touch more maverick than I’d hoped. I might be there for one of the dirtiest deeds of my life, but I wanted no smears of those who had been there before me.

Questions tumbled around my mind. Was I adequately groomed… »

The Surly Bartender has a question: If one group of people spent 20 years of their lives sticking bits of soap up their noses and giggling as they harvested lint from their navels for a midday snack, while another group of people spent the same 20 years studying, say, global climate change, might you… »

Earlier this morning, my mother sent me a note through the interwebs. She said that the East Coast was in a deep freeze and that New York City was bracing for a monster snowstorm that might drop up to two feet around the Metro Area. I was telling a friend about the email and… »

I’ve had some jobs in my day.

It always happened like this. I needed some money so I found some way to make it. The thought of a career never really was my thing. Being something – a doctor, a lawyer, an Indian chief just didn’t ring true. The sense of permanence, grown-up-dom, self-importance, and… »

She visited me three times, maybe more, that soft ghost who smelled like violet, violet and fabric softener perfuming age-perfected jeans. She only came in when nobody else was there, seemingly always as my consciousness ebbed. She didn’t say anything at first, mostly, or if she did I didn’t hear… »