“Help, somebody for the love of God, help me! Help us! Help me and my babies!” It was a familiar scream from the backyard of my next door neighbor. A few of her children were just running around in that backyard playing tag, obliviously having fun. But certain of their…

The fingernails on a stone windowsill, the things we say to each other in dreams. Not you, not me. The stone sill is slate-still, facing the city not a city now. Slate dreams in a one room schoolhouse where no one will return but moonlight and the things moonlight says in…

This is just a short post to encourage people to look more closely into the business dealings of presidential candidate Ramaswamy’s company Roivant and how he misled investors and the public about the “promise” of an Alzheimer’s drug known as intepirdine. Ramaswamy was then C.E.O. of Roivant but he stepped…

Yellow Corporation filed for bankruptcy at the end of July. Thirty thousand people are now unemployed at the various subsidiaries. I worked for two of those subsidiaries in the relatively distant past. I always respected the hard work and sweat of those around me, especially those working the more physically…

Ginny was so excited to be visiting her country cousins that summer. Even better, she would be doing it unsupervised for the first time. Her parents agreed she had reached that magical age to be trusted, thirteen years old, so a two week visit was set up through the family’s…

You are walked slowly down the plush hallway to the sunny lounge by a young woman you are pretty sure is named Scarlet. Didn’t she just say that a few minutes ago? You have never seen her before. Or was she here yesterday? You can’t be sure. Not really. You…

Once, from 1908 to 1940 to be precise, you could order an entire large home from the Sears, Roebuck & Co. mail-order catalog and end up with an impressive abode boasting oak floors, cypress siding and cedar shingles. These homes which sold for between $600 and $6000 will often sell in the millions…

It is the 1970s. Do you know where you are? It is hard to see anyone, really, for all the smoke. Most people are in hazes, purple or otherwise. Each room in the suburban split-level of orange shags and avocado wallpapers is only another compartment of smoke. Husbands have great difficulty seeing wives through the smoke, and vice…

The disappearance of nineteen-year-old Suzanne Lyall from either the UAlbany campus or the Crossgates Mall parking lot one evening in 1998 is one of those mysteries that gets under your skin. First, because “Suzy” was such a sensible young woman who did not appear at first sight to have had…