That Friday afternoon last month, a Green-Wood Cemetery employee named Katie escorted Laura and me as we toured options for our future remains. We walked from buildings to open areas with ponds and vistas, on to another building, and then to yet
A Lost Writer
1 Bonnie and I were close my freshman year of college, her senior year at a neighboring women’s college. She came from a traditional military family and had traveled around the world, not just with her family—in fact, mostly on her own. My feelings
Grandma: A Reminiscence
The gulf in experience between Grandma Spratt and me is captured in two words from her letter of July 18, 1977: “at Wisconsin.” She lived in the town of Darlington, England. When I was four, my parents, brother and I, who were all born there, moved
Twilight of a Stock Broker
Finally a novel has been given mainstream publication that has a principal blind character and is written by a blind author. Edward Hoagland’s In the Country of the Blind appeared late last year, but became available in audio only recently. Because I
Resisting Kafka
1 I’m walking up a busy avenue toward a famous intersection, perhaps Manhattan's Columbus Circle. Pausing at the quiet cross-street just before it, I think maybe I should turn left to avoid being noticed. But that’s paranoia speaking. I press
You Know, I Mean
Catchphrases separate the generations. That they do so seems arbitrary and unfortunate. Everything that causes friction between generations is unfortunate. As a boy in London, I’d ask my father, “What’s up?” and he’d reply acidly, “The sky.” If he