Archive for May, 2009

God’s Top Ten: WWYHDTM?

top-10 I have always been a fan of the top ten list. I suppose it started with Casey Kasem's American Top 40 (Yes. I was around and not in nursery school at the time. OK?), the cleverest marketing device the pre-digital music world ever came up with. After which I graduated to Letterman, who used (uses?) the top ten list as a cool comedic framing device, which I enjoyed even more. Kids, this was all before Amazon's Listmania was even an executive web dream. Of course, t[...]



On Being Timeless

Illustration: Dali's Melting Clocks I have always been troubled by what my mother calls time management. I’m sure other people call it that, too, but I heard it first when I was twelve, trying to get ready for school but repeatedly getting sidetracked for reasons hair-related. “Boy, do you have a problem with managing time,” she would say. I had no idea what she meant, of course, because time, as I knew, [...]



The Other Mother’s Day

eight This past Friday was another kind of Mother's Day: The flip side, the dark side, the impossible side, the side that haunts every mother's quiet moments until she chases the demons away. Friday was the "yahrzeit," or anniversary of death, of Koby Mandell. You may remember Koby from the news, because the story is a hard one to forget. Koby was the 8th grader who, along with his friend, had cut school one beautiful day in May, 2001, as the second Intifada was heating up, [...]



Dust. Wind. Dude.

desert-storm-by-sandman There is a familiar pit in my stomach that tells me I must put something down on paper. So to speak. It's a pit that reminds me of other pits, that makes me 16 again, and 26, all the years joined by a common physiological sense of being carried by an idea or a feeling, literally hungry for something to write. Medical science will tell you that the pit is the work of the vagus nerve in my abdomen, which[...]



Weekly Verse

photo by: massdistraction So, you want people? Let them in, but just so much past the door; otherwise they will either park on your soul or you will end up wanting more. Choose: Which welcome mat position? You lose yourself, Or you simply lose.