My grandmother died of the Spanish Flu

My grandmother died of the Spanish Flu

by | May 7, 2020 | The First Glass

It’s quiet on the Augur Hole Road, but not as quiet as during those Hurricane Irene days when the brook across from our house was one foot above road level and racing down the valley with its flotsam of trees and twisted culverts. After the storm there was an eerie...
Typewriter Days

Typewriter Days

by | May 5, 2020 | The First Glass

Once long ago I needed a job. A friend had just quit as a reporter for a large Midwest newspaper and he suggested I take his place. I’d never worked as a news reporter, but I’d taken a J-School course and had recently written a piece about racing pigeons...

Sleeping With Herodotus

by | May 4, 2020 | The First Glass

There’s a Hemingway story called Now I Lay Me in which he fears sleeping at night ever since he was struck by a mortar during World War I – ‘blown up’  as he puts it. To fall asleep in darkness would cause his soul “to fly out of his body,’ that is, he would...
Today’s Weather

Today’s Weather

by | May 3, 2020 | The First Glass

She was sitting in front of the TV, remote in hand, water, books, and pills on the side table. She lowered the sound when he came in and sat, his back hurting from the day’s work.I don’t think I’ll be able to get up.You poor thing.Bent over a sink...