When Places Pass Away
I live in a small town in southeast Michigan. By midwestern standards, the town is ancient, being slightly more than two hundred years old. Our roots can be traced back to a lodging house built by our founder. The building began life as a stopover on the road from Toledo to Detroit, at a time when that trip was long and treacherous. Our founder’s fortune grew and he built a sawmill, a grist mill, and in time there were churches and a school and homes. It became a thriving, proud township. …
Road Signs
You ain’t never shut up, Davy!
The words erupted in his mind when the morning alarm viciously and rudely tore him from sleep. They must have followed him out of dreaming, but he knew they were the remnants of a boyhood memory, when summers were longer, Coca-Cola colder and sweeter, and the world somehow seemed more pristine and beautiful. The edges of time and space had been hazier and less-detailed, too. By comparison, adulthood was stifling, constricting. Its lines were clearly demarcated and its territorial reach narrowly defined. The cartography of life became increasingly disappointing the further along…
I am a writer. In between the short stories, the essays, the random poem or two, I do brief writerly sketches or take notes on my ideas. These little fragments are scattered across the notes app on my phone, scraps of paper and sticky notes strewn about my desk, and — when I’m in the mood to stay organized — sometimes in a long running document where I type them in.
The intention, at least in the moment, is to capture the essence of the Idea — be it a theme for a story or essay, a sketching of a…
