I Love Toddlers I love toddlers….toddling, waddling… Hopping Leaping Swaggering Staggering Dancing Playing Prancing Scowling Yowling Pinching Howling Slumbering Spitting Hitting Biting Devouring Laughing Bleating Kicking Gyrating Smiling Chuckling Tasting Regurgitating Doodling Scribbling Smacking Crying Painting Stomping Singing Prying Staring Marching Hacking Hopping ..
Instagram…a lament I’m a fledgling pseudo writer, At most just a flash in the pan, I’m a decrepit low tech old geezer, But I’m told I need Instagram. My book has very few readers, I’m not but an also-ran, But young people contend that the solution, Is a presence on Instagram. ..
Up Yer Kilt… Reflections on Robbie Burns Day, January 25…an excerpt from my book titled My Time with You Has Been Short but Very Funny. During my tumultuous childhood, whenever my father would ferociously dress down my mother, a near daily occurrence, he would do so in broad Scots dialect, like a Highlander haranguing..
Asparagus Veins In very early childhood, I learned that my poor mother suffered From what I understood to be asparagus veins. Even at four years of age, I found this bizarre. The veins of her legs were bulbous and swollen. But they were dark purple, not cheerful green. (I checked them out in summer when..
Leonard Cohen: They’ve got you covered First off…a confession …until very recently, I had no idea what a “cover tune” meant. Second confession: Now that I know that “covers” refer to artists interpreting other artists’ work, I have to say that there are a great many cover versions of tunes that I prefer to..
Avignon January 2024: A winter landscape and a bridge to nowhere There is a stark beauty to this winter landscape: Pared down. Bare bones. Hills swallowed by the mist. A bridge Cut off abruptly. Leading to nowhere. A river flowing to the sea. Here’s an eraser. Remove that man from the scene. In..
The Happy Brothers/ Les frères Šťastný Two seemingly disparate fragments of history, one with a decidedly personal edge… Fragment one Anton Šťastný and Peter Šťastný chose to defect from Czechoslovakia to Quebec City, Canada, in late August 1980. Older brother Marian defected a year later to join them on the NHL Nordiques. The professional hockey..
David Sedaris and little old me Most of us have been told at one time or another that we look just like “X” (i.e. my favorite cousin’s best friend’s elder brother/sister/wife/uncle). Well, what happens when someone tells us that we write a whole lot like “X”? Since my book My Time with You Has Been..
I had to bring my 10-month-old baby son to Short Story class at CEGEP Champlain St. Lawrence junior college in Quebec City in January 1982 A Classroom Visitor: January 1982 One’s life is an urn Smashed into shards Made up of memories Sparked, determined, and falsified by Songs, stories, and photographs. Photos create shards…
Skinned alive… surviving by the skin of my teeth For a great many years, I contemplated suicide on a near daily basis. That I didn’t actually follow through on these ideations had much less to do with principles or consideration for others than with an abiding terror of disappearing forever into the yawning abyss of..