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The call of the open road beckoned me backwards. By 1993, I’d travelled enough to never want to travel again. I’d gone from one relationship to another for eighteen years to avoid being alone and buckled up for the next 2,500 miles with only my dog. Phantoms began awakening on the George Washington Bridge before…

Four hundred years ago, indigenous people farmed the vast fertile plains west of the Pequonnock. Other than for shellfish, the Paugussetts had little use for the flood prone lowlands to the east. After Europeans brought disease and stole the rest of their land, what remained of the once great tribe hid out among the forests…

“I’m gonna’ make it harder for you to die,” I said, grabbing garden tools from the bed of my truck and heading toward Eileen’s precious backyard which had been devastated by cold and floods. At eighty-five, Eileen knows I’m easily bored and like to keep everyone on their toes. “You might have enjoyed my father…

After reading about writers awakened by inspiration who claimed their masterworks were dictated by the unseen, then transcribing a few of my own dreams into failed musicals, my muses continue to be patient. Though I don’t believe in any religious deities, I first noticed invisible help as a child while improvising on the piano then…

I never thought I’d want friends around my death bed. Even after spending a recent decade visiting my parents in nursing homes among doctors and staff while getting to know other residents and their family’s stories, I never imagined needing others able to love me in my final hours until seeing my friend Doug a…

I never thought I’d want friends around my death bed. Even after spending a recent decade visiting my parents in nursing homes among doctors and staff while getting to know other residents and their family’s stories, I never imagined needing others able to love me in my final hours until visiting my friend Doug a…

Other than musical theater ensembles, which are hardly the same, the last time I sang in a legitimate choir was at a college in Vermont in 1980. After being cooped up with my partner and her two kids eight miles from the Canadian border, hippie life was wearing thin. Rather than admitting I was gay,…

The couple who bought the house behind us with “armies of nieces and nephews,” finally finished building their pool. “For the grandkids, hopefully by this summer or at least before they’re off to college,” Chrissy from Long Island squawked, complaining about St. Augustine’s drug-addled workforce. Though their firepit and patios are still unfinished and masonry…

Maybe it was from chewing on lead sinkers while fishing as a kid, but I’ve always suspected I might have brain damage. Doctors said lots of kids reverse numbers, count on fingers, and learn things the hard way. Though getting sucked into tornadoes like Dorothy is typical for people with dyslexia, it never occurred to…

Will I ever hear spring again without Cardinals singing “Covid, Covid, Covid?” was the last thing I wrote before I quit trying to write and turned my attention to NPR. Two months later, “All Things Considered” jumped from the refugee crisis to a gay New York Times columnist whose recent memoir “The Beauty of Dusk,”…