Featured Works: Week of Sep. 4 (Friendship)
Friendship keeps us going, gives us support, tells us who we are, and forms a basis for our life’s stories. This week’s contributors examine different ways that friends can impact our lives. “4’33” by Glenn Kane relives a day of mischief, courtesy of a fellow high school band member. Old friends reconnect in “Visitor” by Kevin J. Lenihan, as their memories give way to a darker present. “Stoned English Majors” by Stuart Michaelson is a coming-of-age story where independence, and friendship, sometimes prove to be at odds. “Burning Out” by Kevin J.B. O’Connor...
Read More4’33
Okay, okay, I know … I remember opening this bottle of Zocor that is right here in front of me. I mean, it was just a few minutes ago that I did, just before I let myself get distracted by the news on TV that wasn’t really news, nothing that Walter Cronkite would have put on the news anyway. The question remains, the question the bottle seems to be asking me is: did I already take my nightly tablet? Honestly, I haven’t a clue—and that, of course was something I did or didn’t do after I opened the bottle. I do remember taking a tablet—but was that last night, the night before, the...
Read MoreAria
Not once have I wept over art in the Louvre, Uffizi or Met. Well, almost over van der Weyden’s Descent in the Prado, Mary’s grief, but that may have been indigestion after Madrid’s tapas, the Museum of Ham. A lithograph in Chelsea, Kathe Kollwitz’s dead mother and child splayed, stiff, discarded on the curb, brought a single, quiet tear. At the reception, the gallery on Water Street, I am at first preoccupied with drawings, paintings, prints, porcelain; delicate, curious assemblages, diminutive Constructivism; with wine, cheese and those gooey sweets with marshmallows, coconut and...
Read MoreFor What It’s Worth
Woolworths at Cedarbrook Mall, just outside my home town of Philadelphia, didn’t look like much, but that was beside the point. Back in the Sixties, it was a great place for teenagers like me to visit during trips to the mall, especially the variety store’s record cut-out bin. Filled with carelessly tossed-in crap, near-crap, and the occasional gem, at 33 cents for a 45-rpm single, a buck for an LP, it invited those long on musical thirst and short on cash to find keys to their universe. One afternoon in 1968, I found one of mine, a rare version of Buffalo Springfield’s self-titled...
Read MoreEight Days in Prison
This is just an experiment. Let’s be clear about that right up front. I don’t want you thinking this is going to be a regular thing. This is a one-time-only day-by-day account of my life (such as it is) in an Illinois prison, over the next few days. Maybe a couple of weeks. I’m not sure yet. I should give you a background about myself. I was born on March 23, 1969, right before the Summer of Love. My name at birth was Nicky Joe Elliot. That’s what was on my original birth certificate. I know what you’re thinking: a totes legit name for a convict. It didn’t...
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