BALLAD OF BERME ROAD

photo: Manzanita is lifted onto the "Toyama" Hitchhiking Through Europe with a Half Ton Lifeboat Introduction (from a letter home): When I last scribbled you that card, we had found ourselves quite unexpectedly in France. Last week I accosted a sturdy steel Dutch fishing boat which had stopped for a brief rest at the Gibraltar Marina on its way to Sete. When the crew, a bunch of would-be red coral divers, said we and our sixteen foot lifeboat could go along with them,

A Memoir of Hope, Forlorn and Otherwise Jan. 2016 I had really planned to go to Albany that weekend. A prepaid musical weekend with old...

[This article appeared on a website called "Brick Collector", whose creators had obtained it I know not how. Actually they had no doubt...

To Nicholas Peck, who in his laconic and inscrutable manner first suggested I embark on this particular undertaking, and to the memory of...

A Personal Quest Through Family History [Originally written in 1997, here with recent edits] On a warm April day in 1986, my father and...

[This article was published in the magazine “The Westchester Historian", Spring 2001] The first time I came to the “Clearwater Revival” music festival, in 1985, my eye was caught by the “Underhill Ave.” exit sign, where I was to turn off for Croton Point. This was my first inkling that the sense of homecoming I felt at Croton had roots that went back further than my connection with Clearwater. The better I get to know the Point, the more I appreciate its unique natural and hu

[I wrote this when given the High School English assignment of imagining myself in 50 years. It was published in “Literary Cavalcade” of...

Noun. Hothouse flower. A person who is very fragile and vulnerable as a result of having been sheltered. Journal entry, May 15, 1976. Age...

Or, Diogenes Meets Jack Kerouac Meets the Swiss Family Robinson “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – T.S. Eliot My partner and I used to spend our summers living in a rowboat. That was before we had children, pets, a mortgage, two cars, a telephone and an address, and long before the advent of the internet and cell phones. We were traveling light in those days. Ever

The very first time I ever saw the house on Berme Road, the tenants made sure that I was shown a rattlesnake. It's probable that they...

[This is a combination of actual journal entries, and explanatory passages written seven years later, edited somewhat. Names have been...

Goody Underhill's Catechism, or Considering a Basic Template for a Moral Life I was going to call this "The Seven Deadly Virtues". Turns...

Dec. 5, 2016 Hold Me Tight and Fear Not, or The Revenge of the Needle Fairy “For they may turn me in your arms To a fearsome dragon snake...

Dear Mom- I wanted to thank you for being such a fierce, loving Mama Lion to me all of my life. For showing me how to be strong; how to...

Pearl Bowser, my friend Jora's mother, who lived on Joralemon Street in Brooklyn, had a bulletin board in her kitchen completely filled...

Back when I was in my teens and crewing on large piratical looking sailboats, I was given a nickname by the figurehead carver. He called...

My phone rang and it was Dave, my former partner and Dad of all my kids who happens to be fighting cancer right now, going down to Sloan...

On Beginnings and Endings 1/19/19 It's a raw, gray late January day, with a knifelike east wind blowing and a big snow storm on the way....

THINGS IN THE HOUSE: 1 The Soldier and the Girl and the Briar Rose 1/20/2019 Two wooden cookie presses, each about the size of a deck of...

Watching Mom and her partner Ann breathing, often synchronously, as they lie together on the bed under the light blue comforter, Ann...