It was about six months after the death of my mother that I finally mustered the courage to organize all the boxed and scattered family photos she left behind. Walking into a boutique, upscale stationery store, I spotted an embossed leather photo album hand-crafted in Italy. Its price shot way over my […]
My gal pal has a type. Not a type she prefers, but rather a type that prefers her. Her appeal to this type of guy is so reliable that when she sees a man of this type—most often, these days, in a grocery store—she begins to prepare herself for the eventual approach. […]
Back to what I was saying about making choices with the freedoms you have. It was not hard to ask my sons if they would like to forgo Christmas gifts this year and travel together instead—to make memories instead of buying things because the season dictates. We had great, traditional Christmases […]
It was mid-afternoon on Thanksgiving day. We were leaving one holiday party for other holiday parties where we did not want to be late. Since what we saw somewhat defies belief, let the record reflect we had been drinking only water and taking no drugs. We were driving north in somewhat […]
Long before Tom Brokaw christened his “Greatest Generation,” Baby Boomers inaugurated the trend of iconizing the 1960s that was their generational crucible. The peace sign, long hair, and incense-soaked head shops pretending to sell “tobacco products” softened the blow of news that a friend was killed or injured in Vietnam. To belong […]
When we moved into our house, a friend took in the black wrought iron fence, the house set well back from its perimeter, and grinned. “The Munsters.” Our haunting, though, took the form of rust. And because somewhere beneath the layers of black Rustoleum was an embossed date in the 1800s, we […]
Well, I am back to being an essayist/journalist/travel writer/critic/blogger/feuilletonist, after a month’s vacation, a word that comes from a root that means “empty” or “free.” Vacated. Ah, but from what? Despite my time off, the back of my couch is lined with (new to me) half-read books—Dorothy Day, Leslie Fiedler, Adam […]
One of the glaring aspects of our modern world is that we talk faster than we shop by an order of magnitude. Sure, it has always been true that we communicate faster than we acquire goods and services. But never before have we been able to talk to so many people […]
In 1870, “Chinese” was the first time an Asian category for race was included in the U.S decennial census. By 1890, “Japanese” was the second. It was not until the 1910 census that other Asian categories were identified as “Filipino,” “Hindu” (used incorrectly for Indian Americans), and “Korean.” That year, 160 Filipinos lived in the […]
Nestled in the Park County Local History Digital Archive, an electronic collection of visual and oral documentation from Park County, Colorado, lives a photograph titled “Woman of Asian descent sitting with bound feet.” Inscribed on the lower right corner, is an address: 619 Kearny St, San Francisco. And next to it, on […]
