Memo

The darkness used to be ignorance. Now it’s technology. Every time I see a person walking down the street with head down and their eyes glued to a screen, I know they’re illiterate. ƒ

Zeno’s Revenge

I had this professor back in college. I guess I grew up in a time when we realized not all professors were very bright. Maybe I grew up since. Anyway, this professor gave us an assignment to answer Zeno’s Paradox. Here’s how it goes. Zeno asked, “How long does it take an arrow to reach…

A Dragon’s Tale

I met a dragon. It’s one of the dragons who live in our neighborhood. I heard him the other morning breathing out by the curb. I mistook the sound for a neighbor shoveling snow, you know, the rhythmic rasping a shovel makes on pavement. “How are you doing?” I asked. “Not bad,” he replied. “Yourself?”…

SHAME

To the Pathetic Members of the Extraordinary Session of the Wisconsin Legislature There are desperate people in this State. People who can’t get out of bed in the morning because they’re so sick or afraid or depressed or impoverished or hooked on some filthy drug they took because they were in pain or sick or…

God Loves Me

Today I went to a bookstore and bought a book. I did not intend to buy the book and the bookstore deals in used books so of course I could not buy a very new book, so I took particular delight in buying an old one. I bought a book printed in 1897. That kind…

B & B

The room didn’t get it. “Why,” he thought, “do they always make romance pink and frilly, more a mauve, that color between awful and bordello?” He brought his wife here for their twentieth anniversary. If he’d known the pictures were this accurate, he’d have made reservations somewhere else. The bed and breakfast had four poster…

One More Excerpt

The answer does not come from the problem. The answer comes from God. The cabin on the frontier, the mansion on the hill, do not come from the inventiveness of man or woman. They come from the willingness of God that they should come at all. It is not us against the wilderness, it is…

Another Excerpt – Same Novel

I want to sing as the bird sings in anticipation of the dawn. I want to sing as the bird sings in sunlight and clear blue skies. I want to sing as the birds sings in the twilight and gloaming, under the leaden skies of impending rain and through the tempest, yet keeping my wings…

Don’t Give Up – Excerpt of a Novel

Don’t give up, America. Don’t give up. Keep trying. Don’t let them tell you it isn’t worthwhile. Don’t let them rob you of the confidence to try by telling you it isn’t as pure or fine or noble or heroic as you thought. They haven’t gone through what you’ve gone through. They’re trying to make…

Paternity

“You son of a bitch.” That’s what he said. That’s what the man heard sitting at the bar. “You son of a bitch,” the kid said a second time when the man at the bar old enough to be his father didn’t respond. You don’t respond right away to son of a bitch if you’re…