Category Archives: Essays & Stories

Kielbasa

May 18, 2022 By in Essays, Essays & Stories, Non-fiction Tags: , , ,

Lately it hasn’t felt very spring-like. Not on the street where I live anyway, on Manhattan Ave, in Brooklyn, a stone’s throw from Greenpoint Ave. and the Greenpoint G train stop. There’s no stones on the street to prove my point so you have to take it as an article of faith. The weather has been raw, and windy, not nasty, not exactly winter coat weather but not exactly spring jacket weather either. Sort of in between, so no matter how you dress you are wrong. 

I only live on this street during the week, Monday through Friday. Every Friday evening I leave my job at Steiner Studios at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and slog home to Western Massachusetts through heavy traffic. My feet don’t personally do the slogging, since I’m driving a rented minivan, but the traffic is always heavy and I’m always tired and I never seem to make it home before 10:30 or 11:00. 

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The Wondrous Star

April 17, 2022 By in Essays, Essays & Stories, Non-fiction Tags: , , , , ,

I have a new therapist, his name is Bleep. This is really neither here nor there, except he is the reason I have lately been in touch with the ten-year-old me — with some spillover to the nine and eleven and twelve-year-old me’s. Prior to being in touch with the ten-year-old me,  it was suggested that I keep a journal of negative thoughts. I’m no dummy. This is a classic therapist’s parlor trick, one cleverly deployed when they see that your time is almost up. “You might try keeping a journal of negative thoughts, and then, challenge those negative thoughts.” I always nod and agree to do this but like am I really going to whip out my journal every time a stinkbug lands in my coffee cup, which happens a lot more than I’d care to admit, our house being infested with them?   Plus I think Bleep doesn’t really like my insurance plan. I don’t think it pays him enough, so I don’t want to push him too far with negativity. Maybe that’s why he suggested we till the more fertile fields of my youth, plow up the past, find out just when all this trouble began.

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Gotham

November 9, 2018 By in Essays, Non-fiction Tags: , , , , , , ,

     It is sometime between coffee and lunch when I nearly cut my left index finger off with the molten edge of the cutting wheel. Standing there, on the gallery of the Gotham City Police precinct set, I peer into the dark hole in my work glove and for a moment my legs nearly give out as I see nothing but crimson and feel nothing but pain. My impatient task master, Hoaung – introduced to me as Juan and who I assumed was a Latino until a closer observation of his stocky features moved the pin to a different part of the globe entirely – is waiting for me to continue, as if losing the tip of a finger is no reason to delay production. I steady myself against the metal railing we are welding. My co-worker Gary, a little too eager to show Hoaung he is not intimidated by metalwork, urges me to see the medic. Continue reading →

Heat Death

April 29, 2018 By in Essays, Non-fiction Tags: , , ,

About twenty years ago I was granted an old boyhood wish when my father-in-law, purging his closet, offered me his Astroscan telescope. It was manufactured by the Edmund Scientific Company, and as a boy in the late 1960’s and early 70’s, I used to covet their catalog. Although their primary focus was all things optical, they also offered such irresistible nerd-bait as parabolic spy microphones, gyroscopes, solar cigarette lighters, black lights, one-way mirrors, and surplus gear from WW II. The Astroscan quickly became one of Edmund’s iconic products. It’s a stubby, fat little thing, a shiny red plastic reflector scope with a simple ball-in-socket design. The spherical base at the bottom of the tube freely swivels in an aluminum cradle. It was designed for portability — sling it over your back, or toss it in the backseat of your car, plop the base down on any surface, and you’re in business. Continue reading →