Short Stories

My short stories are non-fictional accounts of people and incidents taken from my life. I try to connect the smaller details of our lives to more universal themes and patterns in society at large. 

 

On Death and Dying

Essays meditating on passing.

• After Arthur: On the Grief of Cats and Humans
• Charlie Brown Down
• Green Grass and Rainbows: The Murder of Doreen Gaul, November 1969
• Lone Wolves and Lost Boys
• Possum Fall
• Suicide of the Superhero: The Loss of a Hero
• The Dying of Jon Spiller

 

Tales Told Out of School

Essays written from my perspective as both a student and a teacher.

• A Liberal in the Land of Canaan
• Blond Jesus: The Holy Hitchhiker
• Jesus Drives Stick
• Integrity is a Four-Letter Word
• Marcelle Hall, Saint Rose, the Ebels, and the Long Goodbye
• Never Tell Your Teacher He Is Going to Hell
• Participation Grade
• The Underestimation Destination
• Year of the Dog
• Why I Am a Teacher

 

The Norwood Avenue Chronicles

Articles, essays, and poems chronicling events and people in my life growing up in my childhood home.

• Introduction: The Norwood Avenue Chronicles
• A Star Wars Story
• Audio Documentary: News from the Front: Memories of a World War II Refugee
• Duck and Cover and DIE!: Rehearsing for the Nuclear Holocaust
• Family Affairs and Pieces of Our Childhood
• Green Grass and Rainbows: The Murder of Doreen Gaul, November 1969
• Gus Lascaris — The Garrulous Greek Guru of Norwood Avenue
• I Now Know Why Salmon Swim Upstream
• In Absentia
• Interview with Peter Yarrow, WAMC (1995)
• Lessons from the Front
• Lost, Then Found
• My First Poem: Winter 1978 (poem)
• My Last Fourth of July
• Novak Bowling Supplies, Avenue A
• Starry, Starry Night: Stratton Mountain Scout Reservation, August 1978
• Summer Siren (poem)
• The Curious Case of Rev. C. Christopher Peck, 43
• The CBS Radio Mystery Theater
• The Ghosts of Christmas Past
• The Last Conversation
• The Last Days of the Metro Diner
• The Past is Only Ever a Lifetime Away: Thoughts on the Assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand
• Up, Up, and Away (1974-1975), WAST, Channel 13, Children's Show
• Yankee Stadium Doesn’t Exist Anymore

 

The Prison Chronicles

Articles, essays, and poems based on my experience as a former administrator and teacher in prison education programs. 

• The Prison Chronicles: Introduction
• Arthur John Shawcross: The Monster on Alexander Street
• Inmate Art
• Justice and Robert Vick
• No Way Jose
• Ode to an Inmate (poem)
• The Criminal Underclass and Inmate Higher Education
• The Verdict of the Damned
• True-Life Prison Stories
• Turning Towards Mecca at the County Jail (poem)
• Way to Go Slugger

 

Other Stories and Ephemera 

• Abbott and Costello Discuss the World Health Organization
• Abbott and Costello Discuss Zen
• Charity, but for the Grace of God
• Salem Street
• Why They Don’t Tell Jokes in an Italian Household

●             ●             ●