You are currently browsing the stories about the Clinton Hill neighborhood

The Darkroom

by 06/30/2019
Neighborhood: Clinton Hill, Midwood

I learned to write in seventh grade. Not to form sentences, but to know and use my voice on paper, and to hope I would be heard. It was 1969: Nixon was president and I had a new teacher: a 26-year-old draft evader named Robert Rusch. He was six feet four and, moreover, wore cowboy […]

102 Steuben

by 06/17/2016
Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Clinton Hill

When I think of my dad, I think of the stories he’s told me. What he knows and what he wants me to know. I think of the time at Friendly’s when he etched the web of our ancestors onto a napkin. Patrick to Matthew, Edward and Agnes and Teresa and Mary, and at the […]

Snowfall

by 02/22/2002
Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Clinton Hill

This recent snow made me think of my friend Glen Seator, who is dead. In January or February of 1996, there was a bad snowfall — Glen and I were very good friends then. I was living in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, next to the BQE, and Glen was about two miles south of me, right […]