Against the Middle
This article was published as one of two stories about Bruce Springsteen’s Super Bowl Ad. The other was written by Mike Morgan. There’s a chapel in KansasStanding on the exact center of the lower forty-eight.It never closes.All are more than welcomeTo come meet here, in the middle.It’s no secret the
O Brooklyn, My Brooklyn
This article was just published in Hard Crackers #8 (Summer 2021) with a companion article by Mike Morgan. I once heard that 1 out of every 12 people in the United States had been born in Brooklyn. I am one of those. I am at the terrible disadvantage of writing
After Memorial Day
Once when I was a kid, my father took me to a Memorial Day Parade in Manhattan. I had no idea why he decided to do so. I remember feeling uncomfortable during the parade and wondered if he was trying to tell me something. He had been in the Navy
It’s up to us not to heed the call-up
This article was written as a companion piece to an article by Mike Morgan under the shared title of “Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory.“ In 1980, the great English punk band, The Clash, recorded a powerful anti-war song titled “The Call-up.” While the call-up initially refers to the drafting
Vaccine Miseries
This article was originally published in January of 2021. It all seemed so very hopeful when the cable channels were breathlessly reporting on the initial shipments of the Pfizer vaccine in the middle of December. Remember the reports of the big UPS and FedEx trucks pulling away from the Pfizer
They Lost My COVID Test
This article was originally published in December of 2020. Almost two weeks ago, I thought that I might have been exposed to someone with the COVID infection. I waited for a week and then my wife, Laurene, and I went to a nearby testing site—consisting of a dozen trailers in