Good morning from the parking lot behind Darling’s Auto in Augusta, Maine where I’ve spent the night in fetal position on the back seat of my electric vehicle, waiting the required seven hours for it to charge. Oh, it’s a wonder, this new form of transportation. Drive awhile, wait awhile; drive and charge, drive and charge. What’s time to a weary traveler?...
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My grandfather was a slender man with a high forehead and immaculate hands. He was a fly fisherman, and the reason we didn’t see him often was because he fished all over the world instead of staying home in Connecticut with his family. My father was his son. My father wasn’t a slender man; he was of normal bulk and had a full head of hair. His hands...
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When I was a freshman in college, I decided to memorize “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” It was a weird year for me. I was living in a converted lounge, the best the formerly all-male college could do to accommodate its new female students. My dorm room had a beige linoleum floor, stark white walls, no windows, and two bunk beds placed randomly in...
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It’s been 270 million years since Flagstaff might have advertised itself as a beach destination. Not the kind with vendors and umbrellas, boardwalks and roller bladers, people large and small squirming with sunburn and spilling out of their swimsuits. No humans—no mammals at all—no birds, not even dinosaurs roamed these shores. The ocean’s evidence is...
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My first day in prison went better than I expected. The guards were patient with me, even when I was stuck for several minutes in a sort of no man’s land between two heavy doors, a security zone with cameras set too high to record the presence of a five-foot tall person. It took some jumping and waving on my part to activate the inside door, and by then I...
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