Carry That Weight

July 19, 2018.Reading time 9 minutes.

Parked in my driveway with my face resting on the steering wheel, to the casual passerby I probably looked like the “after” in an Ambien ad. I was listening so intently to the radio that I had my face mashed as close to the speaker as it could get. It was an interview on NPR’s […]

Hail Mary

July 12, 2018.Reading time 15 minutes.

I’m not interested in church for the religion as much as I am for the variety. Visit a city or even a mid-size town and pop into a few of these institutions and you’ll see what I mean. Some resemble medieval castles with their lethal spirals and flying buttresses while others are modest boxy things […]

Funky Town: Graffiti Alley

June 28, 2018.Reading time 5 minutes.

Every city has its kink, its pockets of oddball charm like the shag rug underneath the grand piano. Seattle has an entire second subterranean city sunk underneath its streets. New Orleans encourages graveyard tourism. Los Angeles is block after creepy block lifted from a David Lynch film. Boston has Graffiti Alley—funk central in the form […]

This Is U.S.

June 21, 2018.Reading time 9 minutes.

All the other parents swooped into the rec hall to collect their kids from the “children’s mass” except mine. I was five. Stranded. Abandoned, like, forever probably came the panicky whisper in my child’s mind as green and unruly as a field of wildflowers. We were not really a churchy family. My father swore off […]

Boston’s Magnolia Queen

April 26, 2018.Reading time 7 minutes.

Laura Dwight started keeping a mental inventory of all the ways her once great neighborhood in Boston’s Back Bay was headed for the garbage chute– crumbling front stoops, broken gates, dirt and litter patches passing for gardens and flower beds. She lived in the Back Bay, the tidy track of streets surrounding Newbury St, Boston’s […]

Stacked: The Boston Public Library

April 13, 2018.Reading time 12 minutes.

After living here for more than a decade, I thought it was time to visit the Boston Public Library. I wasn’t avoiding the library. I don’t have any past traumatic library experiences like racking up enormous overdue fines or getting busted reading a copy of the Karma Sutra tucked behind A Brief History of Time. […]

The Universe is Phoebe’s Tattoo

March 21, 2018.Reading time 7 minutes.

There’s an episode of Friends where Rachel convinces Phoebe to get a tattoo with her. go Rachel has a small heart inked on her hip. Phoebe chickens out. The blue speck of ink on her shoulder is as far as she got before bolting. Rachel is pissed; they had a pact. “They use needles!” she […]