November 22, 2023

Archive

Leftovers

There’s a large story I like to tell about leftovers–I was looking for an adjective to place before story and after a few came into my mind I settled upon large. I’m not sure why, maybe there’s just a kind of largeness to this lifestory. Sometime around 2007 or so, I was doing caricatures for a monthly clubhouse party for residents that lived in upscale condos, somewhere up near West Chester. The condo management would splurge on a lovely party...

“Who Do You Think You Are, ‘Billy Graham’?”

“Who do you think you are, Billy Graham!!??” Those are my most definitively-recollected, specific words that my mother said to me in that particular encounter over forty years ago. __________ College days seem so far away, and the exact dates of my mother’s various (lengthy) involuntary State-Hospitalizations years ago, with the inevitably difficult encounters that surrounded each event, seem to blur together in my mind these days. As I try to write this piece, I sit here staring here and...

Spiritual Sickness

I have felt fairly sick since Friday but seem to be turning a corner. All physical illness–like spiritual and psychological illness–seems to exist on a continuum. When something is wrong in our physical bodies, we start to notice symptoms. And then we try to interpret the symptoms–their severity, or find a possible cause. I’ve had four days now wondering why I was feeling great Thursday, working for an extended time outdoors and indoors that involved significant physical work, cumulating with...