Mom’s verbal visions vitalised chat. Simple sayings summon a century passed Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash “Not enough blue for a Dutchman’s pants.” “We’ll eat what we can, and what we can’t, we’ll can.” “It’s a toenail moon” “Take your coat off, or you won’t feel the good of it when you go outside.” …

The CDC has failed Agency to change course, but offers no details If you’re age 65 or above, the Covid-19 Pandemic will hunt you down and kill you. I was going to write something witty about being 70 plus. But there’s nothing funny about the devastation Covid-19 has visited on the post 65 age group. The toll among…

Speckled brown clumps of feather and gristle were inches from my freckled face. I was 11 years old, aboard a heavy salvage barge. The deck held muddy, jagged airplane parts pulled from Winthrop Bay by a crane. Looming over me was a massive Lockheed L-188A Electra turboprop aircraft engine. I…

Mom better be in heaven, or there’ll be hell to pay. Religion class as a kid was a snooze until a Catholic nun taught us about Purgatory. The lesson that black day in grammar school in the mid 1950’s was this: my beloved, caring, but unfortunately Protestant mother couldn’t go…

It seemed the world’s suffering drifted onto my desk in the busy newsroom. Letters on official stationery, accompanied by handwritten notes piled up amid clatter of typewriters and police scanners. A cornucopia of hurt had spilled from a mailbag. Each entreaty vying for attention. Families upended by drug abuse, jobs…

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” COVID-19: the single worst cause of death in modern US history The most prosperous and medically advanced nation on Earth lacks a coherent plan to combat the Covid pandemic. Leaders struggle to rebut lies and misinformation against Covid precautions - held hostage by less than 24 percent of…

KEEP IT SHORT How brief lede sentences grip readers “Gary Robinson died hungry.” Edna Buchanan, the Pulitzer Prize winning Miami Herald crime writer wrote brilliant lead sentences. Her brief intro transformed a routine police blotter note into a journalism masterpiece. The tale of an unruly customer in crime-ridden Miami killed over a chicken…

My eyes tracked a thin line of blue smoke from the cellar rafters down to a smoking cigarette. The brass ashtray, coins and cartridges spurred my curiosity as a kid in my Dad’s musty basement workshop. What happened June 6, 1944? The battered memorial anchored the left side of my…

Here’s why I think it happened: The story was a childhood memoir of massive death from an airplane crash in my small town; how it affected townspeople and altered my perception of death. It was an eyewitness account. I recalled 60 years later standing on the salvage barge as an adolescent. …