You are currently viewing the stories for “October 2009.”
When I was growing up in the west of Ireland in the fifties my grandfather gifted me with stories about Samhain, (pronounced, SOW-in) now known as All Hallows Eve or Halloween. Samhain, a Gaelic word, meaning “end of summer,” signaled the coming of winter and the beginning of the Celtic New Year. “In the olden days, this was a mighty [...]
No, I wasn’t going to cut school to go to Yankee Stadium and watch the Yankees play the Orioles during their 1967 season. “Aw, c’mon, BB, let’s do it,” recommended “Reese,” one of my Southwest Bronx neighborhood pals and fellow schoolmate during my sophomore year at DeWitt Clinton High School. Otherwise easygoing, when it came to missing school, I couldn’t [...]
Last August, on a brutally hot Sunday afternoon, after a debilitating outdoor 90-degree basketball game courtesy of The Word bookstore league, I was shuffling along the sidewalks from Greenpoint to the Bedford L stop trying to bring my core temperature below triple-digits. Needing a respite, I stopped to watch a softball game on a playground diamond across from McCarren Park [...]
When asked why I left Germany for New York, I have two answers, depending on my mood and on the patience of the listener. The short answer is: I fell in love with an American. The second answer is: On our birthdays my sisters and I were given pieces of silverware from a prestigious German manufactory that names its models [...]
The weather is turning. At home I didn’t notice the wind, but by the time we’d walked all the way to the library our ponytails held only half as much hair as they did when we left. There was an easy remedy: hold the band between your teeth, gather up the loose strands, pull them through the loop a few [...]
