Clik here to view.
A VISIT
Sometimes I imagine that Shirley comes home. At least to visit. She looks around our loft, in which little has changed in nine months. “That’s new,” she says, pointing to a framed photograph in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
HIS MASTER’S VOICE
An odd thing happened to me the other day. I was talking to someone and I used an expression that I had never used before, but was something that Shirley might have a said. Even as I spoke I recognized...
View ArticleWEIRDOS
A “nation of weirdos” is how Michael Brendan Doherty characterized the United States the other day on The Editors Fourth of July podcast. It was meant kindly. The weirdos have included Thomas Edison,...
View ArticleTHERE’S AN APP FOR THAT
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Tell that to today’s museum curators, who insist of covering gallery walls with words, identifying the picture, who painted it and when, and of...
View ArticleTHIS IS THE PLACE
Architects and town planners often refer to a “sense of place” as a mark of authenticity. For example, Central Park has a sense of place, but a Walmart parking lot doesn’t. Nothing is as bad as...
View ArticleFOREIGN SHORES
The Zhejiang University Press of Hangzhou has published Chinese translations of Home and Waiting for the Weekend. A reader of the latter will find a postcard with an image of Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday...
View ArticleNOTHING BUT THE FACTS, MA’AM
When I started writing I found myself dealing with subjects about which I was not knowledgable: medieval history, economics, social mores. My habit was to go to the university library, find a relevant...
View ArticleREMEMBERING
I have different ways of remembering. I have framed an old sketch I came across that shows her in the first home we shared. “Shirley at the table with lots of things” I had written. “And Vitold” she’d...
View ArticleSTREAMING
Wally Byam (1896-1962) built the first Airstream trailer in 1937 (it cost $795). He was trained as a lawyer but had a checkered career. In the 1930s there was a fad for travel trailers, and he tried...
View ArticleWITHOUT SHIRLEY
It is the third year of my life without Shirley. The period of intense grief has passed, but with it also the immediacy of her absence. I still talk to her, and I still occasionally get the feeling...
View Article
