It’s Easter: Into the Sun…with Cecilia
Is there such a thing as an Easter playlist? Aside from the ode to Peter Cottontail hippity-hopping down the bunny trail, or tributes to lovely
The Boulevard is Not That Bad
I was ready to log out of Facebook, with a vow to shake that social-media-monkey off my back for the rest of the day and
Thanks to You, Mary Tyler Moore, I’m Gonna Make it After All
I was 13 years old, gawky, zitty, unpopular, and academically mediocre. Unlike many of the girls in my class, I didn’t have a boyfriend. Mary
Tales of a Teenage Malcontent in the Wicked Winter of 1977
Snow came down like course sea salt on a big ugly Tupperware bowl of pale popcorn. It was January 1977, the coldest month in Pittsburgh history. I was a pint-size high school senior living in a small town 40 miles east of the steel city, serving my time and awaiting the day in late May when I would “commence.” I was, in the words of Paul Simon’s “My Little Town,” savin’ my money, dreamin’ of glory, twitchin’ like a finger on a trigger of a gun. I look back on the stay-at-home snow days of that brutal January – sheltered, sans-siblings, in the bedroom of our four-room apartment – as one of the most beautifully sad, soul-expanding periods of my life. With no actual school work, I was free to feed my psyche with all kinds creative matter. I was free to ponder the meaning of life — to dissect the mysterious beast of High School Land.
Keeping My Foreign Tongue in Cheek
“What’s with all this telephone nonsense of “‘Press 1 for English, press 2 for Spanish’? You live in America. Speak American, you damn illegals, or
The Freshwoman
If someone had told me back in 1977 that young men barely past their Clearasil years would be saying “What’s your major” to me at age 40, I‘d have said “No way!” Well…”way!” It was all part of my experience as a student at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, where I took some non-credit courses in the summer of 2000. Here’s what I wrote at the end of my first day of classes.