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 […]

Household Words, 7

On Christmas Eve, Louie, Monique and my father went to the grocery store on a last-minute errand—whipped cream, or vanilla– something like that. My mom was checking on everything, in calm sequence: the oven, turkey steaming and sweet potatoes bubbling; the microwave, with a casserole dish of steamed canned corn; the refrigerator, where cranberry sauce […]