We’ve found our time cut short on more than one tour, dates as well as minutes. Mostly from acts trading on their hits, acting like they have nothing to prove. But Elmore not only allows it, he insists on it. Says we warm the crowd up for him. His band is superb, make...
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In every mother’s life lurks that one person she dreads most – the Exceptional Mom. This is the mom who shows up everywhere, on time, with her children completely dressed (including both shoes). She makes breakfast, lunch and dinner at home. She can come up with craft ideas off the top of...
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We were sitting around the table in Bill’s apartment, trying to decide whether to go out or stay in and order Chinese. Bill had graduated a year ago, but he’d stayed in Hyde Park for a post-graduate fellowship and to write a private history of a local synagogue while applying to med...
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Darkness comes dissolving wind- crippled pines to silhouette whispers Stars shoot into focus like hurled lances You call me to come from the tent where I am reading Dickinson by flashlight to have a look I put her aside and surface on a plain of stars Their numbers surround us You ask...
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Sammy wasn’t sure why he and Jake were walking through the woods at night. He guessed that they were both too wasted to actually drive, and giggled at the thought. His tee-hee’ing set Jake off, and quickly they were both laughing hysterically. It took them a few side-hugging minutes to settle...
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Here he comes running, the usual skinned knee, wanting a kiss, a band-aid just when I needed a moment to sit down with a book and a cup of tea. Oh, it never was fair sister, those faded hand-me-downs, those dresses to my knees. I remember that...
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Driving south, spring arrives in hours instead of weeks. Pastel blossoms in orchards open, willing virgins to be husbanded from the hives. The greens, the many greens, the leaves of early spring, a palette of uncountable shades, yellowish bright to midnight dark, dot the roadside. Too soon...
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It would appear that the skipped beat of Iowa’s spring has resumed its tempo. I say “it would appear” because several times it has whispered sweetly, seductively, in our winter-vexed ears, only to leave us unbeguiled and forlorn. All the signs were in place: the March 20...
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Riding Acela to Boston Connecticut towns roll by; coffee and church steeples a successful man in coat and tie recalling when three and twenty with no awareness I was blessed, I hopped the train to Shegareni on my way to Nefasit. Wheezing ancient mallets pulling freight...
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The sound of a guitar drew me down the dorm stairs to the student lounge on the ground floor. Through the open double doors, I saw freckled redheaded man picking and humming Tom Dooley in the far corner. I grabbed a coke from the machine, walked across...
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It’s different on the ocean. There are a lot of vessels in our waters on any given day, but you can still float around for a couple of days on your own without seeing a soul. Out there at night, with the stars wheeling overhead, you can feel the stray ghosts from all the ships that came before; you can lie on the deck of your boat and feel the breeze and think about how it started in West Africa and wound its way through the Cape Verde Islands and the West Indies before it got to you. It’s easy to dream, out there. Things that feel enormous on land seem smaller and closer and within reach, when you put yourself on that vast body of water under that endless sky.
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