Tag Archives: new york

A DAY FAR FROM NORMAL by Peter Nolan Smith

That morning a jet roared above the East Village. I opened my eyes. Lots of planes and helicopters flew over Manhattan. None of them ever this low or fast or loud. Thirty seconds later my apartment windows shook with a muffled thud that sounded more a boom than a crash. The children from the day-care […]

VOW OF SILENCE by Peter Nolan Smith

Almost everyone in the world has a phone. Cellular service instantly connects New York with Antarctica or Greenland. I call my son Fenway’s mom and Mam will pick up in Thailand. Every minute millions of cellular calls and SMS messages crisscross the globe searching billions of destinations. We are so close, yet so far away […]

ONE RPM by Peter Nolan Smith

PUBLISHED IN ELK 2006 February’s blizzards buried New York City with two-foot drifts and people conversed about Global Warming as a distant threat in comparison to Iraq. America was gearing up to war and nothing could stop the process, because the President was acting like a pit bull too stubborn to spit out the bone […]

Hellah Swelter

A horrid heatwave has scorched the Eastern Seaboard for the past four days. New York thermometers have read in the upper 90s. This evening I descended into the subway. The temperature rose 10 degrees Fahrenheit on each level. The train platform had to be in the 100s. I hurried into the air-conditioned train. A cool […]

Hurry Hurry to Nowhere

June 21 marked the summer solstice, but the America’s calendar is governed by the July 4th holiday and nothing says summer more than the Independence Day Traffic Festival. Millions of cars, trucks, and motorcycles hit the highways for fun, sun, BBQs, beer, beaches, pools, lakes, and mountains. Anyplace, but home and the bottlenecks, accidents and […]