(Follows on the last two sections.) “Whoa, you going somewhere, buddy?” He grabbed hold of my arm and steered me back into the restaurant. “My dad—” I began. “I know, I know. But you’re really going to want to hear…

One weekday afternoon when I was 4 and my mother was working, I was sitting on the kitchen floor, playing. At the kitchen table, my father was staring at a letter of acceptance from an engineering school hundreds of miles…

Portrait of a worker in black and white I have a good friend who has fallen on hard times. You say he didn’t fall, he was pushed. He went to vocational high school and found he loved metal work. People…

“…….creeps in this petty pace , From day to day, To the last syllable Of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, A poor…

At the close of this week, as I am lifted gradually out of a low mood by medications and mindfulness, I find myself grateful for memory and creativity, as well as for the oxymoron of a sporadic form of consistency.…

Faith, my friend, told me what it was like in Nicaragua, in 1978, on the first day of the revolution. Revolutionary partisans easily gained access to the only local radio station, for they already worked there. One morning, my friend…

My old familiar fear Clutches me right here! Don't take candy from a stranger! Don't wander off into danger! Do not speak unless spoken to-- Silence is golden & so are you. If a stranger sits next to you on…

Don’t take this wrong way, but one of the things I missed the most during Covid was spending time in the men’s locker room at the Berkeley YMCA. It wasn’t erotic or anything. I’m not attracted to men. But it…

I sat in an audience of thousands , one Fall Saturday long ago, in the middle of Madison Square Garden, NYC, listening to the dynamic and much maligned Werner Ehrhardt delivering another of his mesmerizing lessons on the nature of…

(This follows on what you read before.) The hostess, one of those impossibly beautiful young women I suspect even young men had trouble talking to, glanced up at me. I pretended not to see her. Hank wasn’t here yet, which…

When people are hurt, angry and/or afraid, how can they become good? Good meaning having compassion, that is feeling concern for others and wanting to take action to help. I used to think it was based on their material conditions.…