It wasn’t that long ago, late October, mid-day, mid-week. I was in a classroom on the third floor of our four-story university building, readying the projector for a PowerPoint I was going to present when my storytelling class began in about five minutes. Above the din and swirl of students in the hallway, I heard what sounded like a bell and then an...
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I rendezvoused with a graduate school friend a few weekends ago. Verena and I were in a class of about three dozen journalists who marauded Washington, D.C., in 1990. Most of us were print reporters. All of us were swashbucklers, young and hungry, enamored of journalism for its appealing audacities and the principles that undergirded the field. We were...
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“Is this Kelly Laura?” It was a she on my cell phone, someone I didn’t know. Someone who sounded like she wore thick eyeliner. Someone whose Russian accent made the question seem as if it were spreading itself onto a slab of dark bread. She said she was with Human Resources at the university where I’m teaching. The post office had called; I had a package....
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It was 1987. Prozac, disposable contact lenses and The Simpsons were introduced into American culture. The average gallon of gas was 89 cents, and airwaves were dominated by ’80s hair bands. No cellphones, no internet, no GPS. I moved to Miami that year and bought a car that seemed fitting: a heavily used, white, 1972 convertible Cadillac. The top was...
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“Those who know they have enough are rich.” — Lao Tzu I spent the December weeks before last Christmas boxing and storing my stuff to make way for an incoming tenant. Part Two of my holiday follies was folding into a torturous origami and cramming into two suitcases all the possessions I anticipated I would need to live abroad for a year. If we can put a...
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