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William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was born at Cockermouth, Cumberland on the 7th of April 1770. He was the second child in a family of four boys & a girl. Dorothy, his sister was born a year & nine months later. Along with his wife she would become one of his most beloved companions. He lost both of his parents quite early in life, being only eight when his mother died & thirteen when his father passed away. After his mother's death he attended the grammar school at Hawkshead where ...

Why is it that buying a kettle is so difficult? Recently we decided to replace our kettle. It’s been a good kettle, we’ve had it for nearly 10 years and it still makes a good brew. But recently the mechanism that opens the lid has broken and it’s become too fiddly and a bit dangerous to use. So we decided to buy a new kettle.

Last time we bought a kettle the spout was of utmost importance. This was because we’d just brought our son into the house and were finding that the pouring ...

Lilly had nine children. Rena Joe, the fourth, strongly resembled the sixth child. Before she died her kids asked about looking different than the others. She said, “Well, that boy 'us back in town. Ya know, womens want some jus' a same as mens.” Many Lilly stories are sexual, very sexual. I would love to figure out how to go about telling them. I wish everyone could have known this lady.

Nine children means dozens of grand children. My friend, Lilly's granddaughter, is one ...

Breadcrumbs


I wonder if he cried when he was driving away.
(The one time I needed to cry for an audience,
I thought of this) –
Long fingers gripped around the steering wheel,
Chest heaving,
Music muted -
Oh, brother mine.

The break came once-upon-a-time ago
With a slow, quiet kind of stab in the dark (the worst kind),
Not very long across, but very deep -
A loss of trust, oozing out of the gash ...

The Gas Crises

Back in the mid 1970’s as in this past year was a gas crises. I wasn’t a driver back then, so I was mostly unconscious of prices. But that’s not really what I wanted to write about.

I was a teenager in the 1970’s and like many teenage boys growing up in Brooklyn I tried weightlifting. It seemed like the thing to do as guys tried to be macho. My friends and I joined a little gym owned by someone older than us, say around his early twenties, a muscle ...