Car Spindle Tattoo

A couple Sundays ago—maybe the hottest day of the year so far—I went to 18th Street to get a tattoo. My last was nearly ten years ago—a Noah’s Ark adapted from a Russian block-printed tapestry I’ve had on walls of places I live since childhood. The new one came from a newer source but stillContinue reading “Car Spindle Tattoo”

Against Travel

A couple Mondays ago I got on the Blue Line to O’Hare and took a night flight to Florence. My parents have found a place in the hills above that city which they’ve returned to enough times that my father has taken to calling it their dacha.It’s a house down a dirt path, in the middleContinue reading “Against Travel”

Old Fashioned Days

Over the past month or so I’ve been working on an article about Roseland in 1970. It has caused me consider how I view my own past, to ask whether my younger days were formative or memorable the way Paul’s, John’s, and Bob’s obviously were to them.  A couple days before I had to turn a draftContinue reading “Old Fashioned Days”