Not-yet-published pieces, stories, essays, rants, and random strangenesses

My job has me writing a lot each week: weekly newsletters, press releases, editorials, forwards and introductions to books—that sort of...

The older I get, the more Christmas fills me with a terrible ambivalence. But please note: “ambivalent” doesn’t imply a...

I was watching an epsiode of The Dog Whisperer this morning. A fellow in a wheelchair was having trouble with his dog who, though...

I’m not sure who said it. Probably my acupuncture physician, but my memory is a bit vague; for all I know, my friends have been saying...

The past week has been extremely hard. Mom died two months ago yesterday, though it feels far more recent. After the funeral came the a...

Since I can’t sleep, I might as well write. Not that I have anything momentous to say (except that my hit counter just hit 45,000). In...

I’ve been waking up lately with my head crammed with a bunch of disjointed thoughts. That in itself is not unusual; my head is a...

I mentioned on Facebook that poetry saved my life. Adam and I were discussing Gerard Manley Hopkins (Adam had written a few lines of...

Just when I thought my nightmares were under control, I find this: a woman in Glen Burnie, Maryland, named Kelly Schreck (her last name,...

Ah, the flatlands! Driving east from Rockford, I’m finding the prairie very refreshing—all these wide vistas, this great expanse of sky....

Here’s a journal entry from 2001, written in the thick of my worst depression (one that came perilously close to suicide), when I had to...