6:43 PM, Thanksgiving Day Carrie’s cell phone rings. It’s Miranda. Carrie picks up. Carrie: Is this the annual I’m-in-hell call? Miranda: I’m in hell. Are you in hell? Please tell me you’re in hell. Carrie: Well…. Miranda: Carrie, Steve is leading my entire family in a Piano Man sing-along. Please don’t let me… Read more »
. This is the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day in 1961. It takes place in Yorkville, Manhattan. The action picks up where my last column’s action left off. Around one, we got back to my father’s family’s apartment for Thanksgiving dinner. Dad’s Mom, and Step-Dad, John Rode, Nan and Pop Cuckoo to me, always cooked our bird. Mom’s… Read more »
Until a few months ago I had not recalled the last instance when I felt afraid, deep fear. It happened suddenly, impressively, unmistakably, indelibly after I dropped my clothes and dipped my whole self into the pond on a friend’s Catskill Mountain estate. My eyes opened underneath the water’s surface, below a sky and above… Read more »
Thanksgiving morning, 1961, Mom woke me quietly and whispered, “Rory is sick. If you wake him up before you leave, you’re not going either.” I shook my head yes. I felt bad that my younger brother, Rory, wouldn’t see the parade, but I was happy to go with Dad alone. It was much easier having… Read more »
Mary Bly is a tenured professor of English Literature at Fordham University with a bachelor’s degree from Harvard, a master’s from Oxford, and a PhD from Yale. According to her Fordham faculty page, her current project, The Geography of Puns: London’s Bawdy Whores, addresses “the geographical and linguistic economies of early modern London.” She serves as… Read more »
Each Thanksgiving, we pause to recognize the things we are truly thankful for. Among my many blessings are my wonderful friends and the fact that each year I get to spend the holiday in Scotland with a small and very important group of them. “Scotland?!” you exclaim. Well, the Thanksgiving traditions with these friends date… Read more »
Ghosts of departed quantities, Where do you find your fulfillment? Bayesian efforts aside, Is there any reason to believe that This moment is different than That one? Who fired the first shot? It’s not a culture war. Maybe you don’t understand. IT IS A REAL WAR. Run? Consider these five facts (and men, listen up!):… Read more »
Like my fathers’ mother, like my father, I love my stuff. I’m no Collyer brother. My place is neat, in its own way. I still own my first two records, both by Dave Seville and the Chipmunks: “Witch Doctor,” in 1958, and 1959, “Alvin’s Harmonica.” The football is from 1969 and the main reason it’s still here:… Read more »
As most readers know, I am not from New York. I am from Belfast, Maine where, as you can imagine, the taxi culture is limited. If you peruse the Yellow Pages, you will find a few taxi companies that service Waldo County, but the companies are usually just folks with a spare station wagon looking… Read more »
“I used to ride in my father’s rumble seat,” Dad told me while we sat at the bar in Loftus Tavern. As Dad drank a short beer and I sipped a Coke, I wondered what’s a rumble seat? He said, “It was a seat that hinged out of the back of the car; it felt… Read more »
