John
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There was a presidential debate the other week (9/28/2020). You might have noticed. It was dreadful, and I’m not going to say anything more about it. But it did stir me to action. Actually, one of my granddogs, Ocho, got there first. He posed for a photo:
It seems clear that – old as both of them are in human years – at least one of the candidates has the maturity of a five-year-old.
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John
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Sukiyaki
The Past: In order to understand the confusion I’ve been laboring under in getting this post ready, readers need some ancient history – i.e., Williamstown, fall, 1965. The college was busily dismantling the august fraternity system. Some houses were sold to the college, which turned them into “social units,” essentially buildings that functioned as eating,
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Recall my blog posting of last month, “Pandemic Communication”? I’m taking a break from my job publishing daily notes from my Williams classmates. Below is my departing letter to my classmates as editor, at least for the next few months, as Joe Bessey – my co-secretary – takes the reins.
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This month is a report on what I’ve been up to for the last two months. I am one of my two class secretaries for the Williams College Class of 1966. Normally every now and then I collect news from as many classmates as I can smack into action and edit their contributions into a column for Williams People,
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John
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It’s been a tough month, March has, and we’re well into April now, with no sign of being able to go outside and play. So we’ve had to make our own fun. Material for this blog is being provided by my two sons, their wife or fiancée, and their dogs.
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John
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In Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time, the compose Hugh Moreland explains to the narrator that he expects to die from nostalgia: “Am I to be suffocated by nostalgia? Will that be my end? I should not be surprised. I can see the headline: MUSICIAN DIES OF NOSTALGIA” (Temporary Kings,
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John
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(Author’s note: The graffito on which this fable is based is – or was – actual. For several years during the ‘seventies it adorned a black railroad bridge outside Brattleboro, Vermont. During this time I knew nothing of its origin, but, whenever I passed beneath it, I used to smile to myself and meditate on its significance.
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I wrote “Lot’s Luck” a long time ago, after teaching GENESIS as literature in a freshman English class. I was fascinated by Lot, who pops up often during the story of Abram/Abraham. It’s something of a scandalous story, and I wrote this version, supplying dialog, to try to make it all hang together.
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John
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For the past few weeks I’ve been coping with a scam: a check-washing scam to be precise.
The story starts on the first of the month. My wife, our two sons, one daughter-in-law and one almost-daughter-in-law went to Santa Monica. We hiked around a park for a while,
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John
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While looking over the manuscript of a friend’s novel about the Los Angeles writing scene, I was reminded of a story out of my past: the late-1970’s, shortly after the publication of my first novel. Never published, it’s pretty autobiographical, a party that a woman friend gave for me,
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