Category Archives: family

The Far West Of Ireland

My grandmother came from County Mayo. Her last name was Walsh. Nana sailed to Boston at the age of fourteen. That ocean voyage was so traumatic that she never returned to Ireland. My mother and her sisters often offered to fly Nana to Shannon. “I don’t want to travel on that sea again.” “Planes don’t […]

Girls Will Be Boys – 2010

“People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stone.” There are no glass houses in Afghanistan, but there are stonings for a wide variety of social offenses. Adultery is the most common, however woman are under constant threat for such trivial trespasses as leaving the house without a male family member or showing their face or attending […]

Tar In The Blood

My father’s side of the family traveled to the New World on the the Mayflower. My antecedents were Howlands. A young indentured servant, John Howland, had been washed overboard mid-Atlantic and somehow had grabbed a trailing lanyard to haul himself to the safety of the Mayflower. Centuries later my Irish Nana had sailed on a […]

THE WRONG SIZE SHOES by Peter Nolan Smith

Twenty-five minutes after the stroke of Twelve New Year’s Eve 1982 a masked assassin shot dead the main investor a block away from the Continental Club on West 25th Street. The FBI and NYPD Internal Affairs investigating Viktor Malenski’s murder and quickly drew lines between the dots. My ex-girlfriend was living with the dead man’s […]

GUILT VERSUS SHAME by Peter Nolan Smith

Back in the last century I left work on 47th Street early on December 24. Manny complained that I was deserting my post selling diamonds, but I had been working every day since Thanksgiving. “I should pay you a half-day.” Manny was a grinch of the first-order. “Do what you want. I’m heading home.” Boston […]