Whenever I look at birds, whether this astonishingly beautiful Silver Pheasant of Southeast Asia photographed by ZW Young, or the drab sparrows outside my windows, I am thrilled. Their aerial agilities, their feathers, their evolutionary history from varieties of dinosaurs, they never cease to astonish. How sad our world would be without them. And as IContinue reading “2022”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
The Good Mom
When I became a mother, I was terrified. As the youngest in my family, and without cousins or friends nearby requiring babysitting, my experience with infants was practically nil. This in high contrast to my husband’s family, sprung from the fertile substrate of the Abruzzese hills, rich in their family life if not in theirContinue reading “The Good Mom”
A Christmas Story
1977. The rusting, cranky VW Camper Bus sat on Old York Road, in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, with a flat rear tire. Very dark: 1 a.m. Christmas morning. Not a single store or gas station open. Very very stormy: Steady light rain. Joe and Dot Haitz, the fragile grandparents, fuming in the back seats. Night: Two babies,Continue reading “A Christmas Story”
Alone
This was the first Christmas card that Anthony and I sent after we were married. We spent a week in New York on our honeymoon, going to a play and lots of museums and restaurants. I really enjoyed the Cloisters in all its medieval glory. I have always liked illustrated manuscripts, so I drew allContinue reading “Alone”
Metalsmith/
The Metalsmith for A: husband, artist, polio survivor In the tick, click, tick on tile the brace nicks and crutches thump. Iron strips stiffen the upper lip of bone. Hammer life down cold, quench the buckling heat of shame and pain to steel. To steal—to step up, to get up, move on, forge two mindsContinue reading “Metalsmith/”
School and All that Stuff!
I don’t remember how I came upon this book; I was probably searching for some obscure information somewhere. Diagramming sentences! God, I was the queen of diagramming in fifth grade at St. Helena’s parochial school in Philadelphia. That wasn’t my parish school, which hadn’t even been built yet in our new suburban development in Cheltenham,Continue reading “School and All that Stuff!”
Just Me
Yesterday a friend called. We hadn’t spoken for a while; I actually thought that maybe my relationship with her was too what—needy? I have trouble making friends; I think often I am too loud, or too imposing, or not listening enough. Perhaps just not very interesting. Or maybe too different. I don’t have my fingerContinue reading “Just Me”
Sweet Ruin
A CHANGE OF PLANS It’s tiring, this endless revision of our idea of a world which is being continually revised– as the painter good-naturedly lengthens the ash on his model’s cigarette–or, if nature is his model, subtracts a leaf from the birch undressing in the yard. It’s hard to remember what we’re practicing for withContinue reading “Sweet Ruin”
Philomena’s Daughter
She is not benign. She has riven my nights with sighs— Clings, delicious, to the memory of young men leaping at the edge of day from high school windows into St. John’s cemetery: above the abattoir, the mills, the stink of smelter fumes rending Manayunk’s hills in 1929. Manayunk—Lenni Lenape Indian name “where we goContinue reading “Philomena’s Daughter”
La Boheme
White paint flaked off the walls, and like an ancient fresco suddenly revealed to air, the beige underlayment created bizarre shapes and outlines. On Camac Street in Center City Philadelphia, art students rented the top floors of an old carriage house converted to a garage for studio space. Tony took over the garret from anotherContinue reading “La Boheme”
The Raven's Toe 