JFK, DADDY AND MEA SHORT STORY November 22, 2016 marks the 53rd anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. JFK, Daddy and Me is a short story I’ve written that is set during that week. (Originally published in Skyline Anthology 2015.) Please read below. Late at night, in my small bedroom, by the soft yellow […]
IRRESPONSIBLY GROWN POTATOES 0:00 / 0:00 Irresponsibly Grown Potatoes Recently, as I walked through the produce section of a grocery store, I passed a sign that said, “Responsibly Grown Potatoes.” Naturally, I began to imagine “Irresponsibly Grown Potatoes.” Would they be grown by a chain-smoking farmer, one who flicks his carcinogenic ashes on the crop?
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SIN AND A HERSHEY’S KISS I was asked to be a guest contributor to the column THE EIGHTH DAY. They just published my essay, SIN AND A HERSHEY KISS. You may read it below or at the online magazine. When my sons were little, we’d give them chocolate at Easter. Nothing fancy. Usually they’d find
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THE SOUND OF A 106 YEAR OLD GIGGLING My grandmother, Benedetta Boccaccio, turned 106 in January. She was born in 1909 in Lawrence, Massachusetts. That year, our country commemorated the 44th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s death. On average, a worker earned 22 cents an hour. Sugar cost 4 cents a pound and a dozen eggs would
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PHI BETA KAPPA JOURNAL REVIEW OFCZARS AND CZARINAS Review by Sama Imran Ilyas Although it is categorized under children’s nonfiction, I found myself completely engrossed by Czars and Czarinas, a new ibook by Deborah Prum (ΦBK, University of Connecticut, ) released earlier this year. Prum is an award-winning author and founder of Still Mountain Bookworks.
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HOW TO CREATE LIVELY CHARACTERSWRITING TIP Photo Courtesy of Bob Dass I take improv classes at The Big Blue Door. Recently, we learned a game called, Present, Past, Future. The exercise gave me wonderful insight in how to create characters who hop off of the page. Here’s how it’s played. One person starts a scene
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SMOKIN’ SCIENCE 0:00 / 0:00 Smokin' Science One day, my seventh grade physical sciences teacher announced mandatory participation in a science fair. Up to the day before the event, I hadn’t prepared. Hadn’t determined a research question. Hadn’t developed a hypothesis and definitely had not come to any conclusions. In my mind, the scientific method
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0:00 / 0:00 Caught in the Jaws of a Claw My exercise essay appeared in The Daily Progress today. See below: CAUGHT IN THE JAWS OF A CLAW Have you ever wanted to be someone you’re not? So, one day I was at the gym exercising on the calf-stretching machine. As you might
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SADDLE UP YOUR PIG Photo Courtesy of Donald Giannatti 0:00 / 0:00 Saddle Up Your Pig What will a mother do for love? To what lengths would she go to make her children happy? My sons expressed one great desire as we planned our summer trip to Montana. They wanted to go horseback riding in
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LAST BOY LEAVING 0:00 / 0:00 Last Boy Leaving I’ve been raising children for twenty-eight years and now my last boy is leaving. He’s going off to college. Every morning, since he was little, he’d walk out to the mailbox by the road and bring in the newspaper. As he’d come back
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