STATE BIRD In New Hampshire, May ought to be the best month of the year. October is exhilarating, certainly, with the maples dressed in their glorious colors and the temperature brisk and bracing, but the color and the temperature are reminders that winter is just around the corner. And winter lasts forever, or seems to,
Obsidian Black stone born in fire, Long journey through heaven’s storms To present stillness. New Year’s Day Ice storm left diamonds On all the hemlock’s fingers. My nose is running. April 15th, 2020 Owls in the barn. The house is deserted. April is cold. No Hurry Two cats watching a porcupine waddling slowly away
As the Orange Oaf in the White House continues to prevaricate and blather nonsense about the coronavirus epidemic while doing little or nothing to stem it, and the Senate Republicans under Mitch (“Mister Bluster”) McConnell continue to refuse to remove him from office for fear of antagonizing the racist, misogynistic knuckle-walkers who shoehorned Drumpf into
Yale Tombs (This piece was written in 2004) I graduated from Yale University in 1964, and in an election year in which both candidates are Yalies who were members of Skull and Bones, some of my friends who think of Yale as a training-ground for Elite Eastern Snobs (which it certainly was while I was
TRY TO REMEMBER The place was a once-grand resort hotel in Branford called the Montowese House, on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound, built by one William Bryan in 1866, for affluent people from New Haven and Hartford seeking healthful sea air and cool breezes during the summers. The Connecticut shore never attracted the
Limericks For The Mango Mussolini How unpleasant to meet Donald Trumpster! If you’re female, he’ll fondle your rumpster. If Latino or black, He’ll launch an attack And try to throw you in the dumpster. How depressing to meet Humpty Drumpty! He shouldn’t be running the country. He’s so stupid and crude, He makes Dubbya look
CAMPAIGN FINANCING Some years ago, I was in a newsstand on Broadway to pick up some smokes, and a woman came in and approached the Pakistani owner. She was in late middle-age, plainly dressed in a subdued blouse and skirt, with sensible shoes, not sneakers, her gray, short-cut hair a sleek helmet. “I’m Marsha Morgenstern
DA SYSTEM, DE JURY Not long too long ago, for the first time in awhile, I got called in for jury duty. I used to be summonsed about every two years, ever since I settled permanently in Manhattan back in 1972, because I was self-employed and Da System assumed I didn’t have a real job.
BACKBEAT I came late to rock ‘n’ roll. In the late 1950s and early ‘60s, when the rhythm and blues of Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, The Big Bopper, and other black musicians merged with the sound of white country-music singers, largely due to the unique talent of a certain Elvis Aron Presley, I was into
This piece is part of a longer essay I wrote in June of 2006 about a trip my wife and I took to Florence in July of 2006. I offer it now, in February, 2020, to honor Saint Valentine. My sticky-notes in the Blue Guide marked the Orsanmichele, a massive, oddly-shaped building built by Florence’s