You are currently viewing the stories for “January 2006.”
I learned a lot from my grandpa, John Francis O'Brien, a native of Cork city (Ireland) and an immigrant to America. He used to always say that he was closest to God when he was connected to nature. Grandpa was quite an unusual character in our working class neighborhood on Detroit's West Side, just a few miles from the city's [...]
Today I had perhaps the most unique experience that I have ever had in my lifetime. I began walking the streets of New Orleans and speaking to people on a one on one basis. This may seem odd to you, and perhaps it is, but I canvassed New Orleans today not as a citizen but as a candidate for Mayor. [...]
The headline on the Detroit Free Press was bold. But it was just another clever way of stating the obvious. Ford Motor Company was going to announce "The Way Forward," actually a way to cut back. Ron Novack sat at his kitchen table and skimmed the story about the plant closures and layoffs that would be announced today. He sipped [...]
After my boyfriend and I broke up, I was lonely so I put an ad on Craigslist. What is it about a man that makes him think sending a picture of his private parts is going to turn a woman on? A little mystery and anticipation is a great thing. I put the ad under "women seeking men." Hoping to [...]
Heath Avenue. I recognized the building right away. Public housing always stands out from all other domiciles. It looms, and, like a tall man, commands your attention. But when you look up, expecting to see his face, you see a blank outline, no distinguishing features. No nose. No mouth. No eyes. We parked on the side street around the corner. [...]
“If you want to tell a story – start telling it. It might come out OK. It might not. At least you tried – better than leaving it in the fridge of memory. Sooner or later, like all man-made things, fridge will stop working and all goods will rot.” --Some guy on the steps near Ganga in Varanasi, India 1. [...]
Basketball has always been my favorite sport to play. I guess that came from living in an urban environment and not always having money. If you had anywhere from 2 to 10 guys, all you needed was one ball and at least one basket. It was a little more complicated in the winter. Fortunately, a local junior high, 204, had [...]
It’s weird, how often you’ll find in out-of-the-way urban areas—below an overpass, next to a river or stream, next to railroad tracks—a pair of jeans, a pair of shoes, unmatching dirty socks, filthy underwear, cast off as if these places were just other rooms, were the private dressing quarters of the damned. I’ve always wondered at this: “These goddamned jeans [...]
Oh man, he's going to die! I live 100 feet from Interstate 95 and from my living room window have an unobstructed view of this sea of vehicles. Having lived here many years the sounds of impending trouble are familiar. So when the horns started blaring it was a cue to look out the window and I did so, just [...]
I looked out the window and saw a woman come walking up the street eating a cupcake. She was blonde, in sneakers, alone. The cupcake’s icing was white. The woman’s timing was perfect— I had begun reading on the computer at dusk; by the time it ran out of power, and the screen went suddenly black, the sky had become [...]
On this warm, wet Christmas, I ambled without purpose somewhere in America. I prefer the inevitable disappointment of a sodden Christmas--the remains of an earlier December snowfall dribbling down storm drains, the exiled smokers unshivering, unbothering with jackets, exhalations elongated in the humidity, the theatrical coziness of houses all the more fake against temperatures well above freezing. Through the neighborhood [...]
Sprouting out of the ground, just south and east of New Orleans, is Christmas. It is a bizarre sort of nativity scene which bears the fruited colors of the season: green and red. Absent are the Magi bringing frankincense, myrrh or oil. Rather, what is present, green on the outside and red upon being split open, is the fruit of [...]
You would think that everyone would know about the New York City Transit Strike, with its coverage in newspapers and television around the clock. On the 2nd day of the strike, I discovered I was wrong. After meeting with a friend at a Starbucks in Morningside Heights, I faced the prospect of either walking to my apartment on 23rd St. [...]
1. If one peers through the storefront windows of the National Jewelers Exchange on West 47th Street, past the hundred or so feet of bustling merchants and shoppers and side-by-side display cases filled with gold and silver, all under the harsh track lighting suspended on cables from the 20-foot ceiling, one can just make out two old-fashioned words painted onto [...]
Where do I begin? On Christmas Eve 1999, I was doing the usual stuff… Following my family's long tradition of going from one home to the next, delivering Christmas presents and cookies, eating and eating some more, singing carols, and sharing midnight mass together downtown. This year, my brother needed a ride back to his in-laws, so we us drove [...]
Before we could convince him to go the neurologist, my father had two head-on collisions in eleven months without remembering how he’d gotten into either of them. Despite my suspicions, I didn’t learn it was Alzheimer’s for sure until my oldest brother called to tell me on the day before Thanksgiving. The call came ten minutes before my parents were [...]
