Category Archives: family

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 […]

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 […]

Better Late Than Never

Merry Christmas Comrades I’m even capitalizing the C to maintain the spiritual peace of the winter holidays even though the Christians stole the Yulemas from the ancient Druids of Stonehenge. Meán Geimhridh commemorating the shortest day of the year predates the Bronze Age. The original rituals from over five thousand years ago have been lost […]

Taking A Friend Home

On the night of April 15, 1912 the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage across the North Atlantic. < Three hours later the unsinkable White Star ocean liner disappeared from sight beneath the sea. Only 20% of the passenger and crew survived the disaster. According to the Bowdoin online magazine one of […]