Annotated Bibliography: Autopsies

The purpose of my reading has been to taste and digest the greatest novels, hoping that their calories will build my writing muscles, and that I’ll better know how to taste my own work, what spices to add as I’m cooking up my own stories. Some things, though, I just can’t develop a taste for. […]

Household Words 8

I was setting another table, in another dining room, when I heard my father on the phone with the hospital. I had been playing Risk with Jerry, who always got to be red, Jerry,who always won. We had played ten times in the last week. The game had been a Christmas present, but overlooked in […]

By Example

Today I found out that my friend Chuck died, and I went to see a psychiatrist for the first time. Big day. Chuck and I got our coffee at the same place for many years. He was in his 70s when I met him. We read the newspapers together, and sometimes he asked me a […]

Crosshairs

Of course, nobody told this guy to shoot a Congressional representative. Still, when I saw Palin’s graphic, I thought of every first-person shooter game with gory blood spurting graphics, and I thought of JFK. And I know if I found crosshairs drawn over a map of my classroom, I’d consider that a violent threat, because students […]