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
Three Years Later The First Day Nones “He’s crazy,“ Geraut said. He was hunched next to Jannequin, both of them wrapped in their cloaks with their hoods pulled down to their noses, backs against the rough front slats of the cart, trying to doze as the old mule plodded along. Eastertide had come late that
Three Years Later The First Day Nones “He’s crazy,“ Geraut said. He was hunched next to Jannequin, both of them wrapped in their cloaks with their hoods pulled down to their noses, backs against the rough front slats of the cart, trying to doze as the old mule plodded along. Eastertide had come late that
PERFECTION Prologue Jannequin knew he was going to die. There were fires breaking out all over the city, and his own people had set them. The Occitan army had begun launching balls of Greek fire over Carcassona’s walls. The Franks were clinging stubbornly to the city, and Count Raimon must have decided to burn it
Dear Kith and Kin, For my blog, ragbagmind.com, I’ve posted a cartoon strip instead of an essay. Some explanation is in order. In the early 1970s I was a member of a troupe of actors that toured the eastern half of the country, from Massachusetts to Louisiana, and from Virginia to Iowa. We were rather
T-BONE AND THE JEEP I started my 18-month Army hitch at the 564th MP Company in Massweiler, Germany as a tower guard, wearing a helmet and carrying an old M-14 rifle and two clips of past-use-date ammunition. But after a few months the CO, Captain “Jumpin’” Jimmy Fine (the “Jumpin’” adjective was because he kept