The Whale Burns His Own Body

The Whale Burns His Own Body

What always shocked the Moby Dickheads was a whaleboat’s flimsiness, how squat the gunnels, how thin the planks separating whalers from depthless ocean and the 65-ton sperm whale they’d stabbed. All yesterday I’d been stuck working the whaleboat exhibit. That meant...
My One and Only, Moonbean

My One and Only, Moonbean

Photo by Anna Sui The Moonbean café, unyielding and un-air-conditioned sits right at the border of Kensington Market in Toronto, Canada. For as long as I remember, which isn’t too long in the grand schemes of things when the scheme is the scale of Toronto, it’s been...
Some Place Like Smoke Hole

Some Place Like Smoke Hole

“Smoke Hole Historic Marker” by Jimmy Emerson, DVM is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 In the fall, we go camping; we drive for five hours to get to Smoke Hole, West Virginia, even though there are plenty of campsites around Baltimore, even though there are beach...
Summers on Ridge Avenue

Summers on Ridge Avenue

“Everybody’s Records” by Koocheekoo is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 I drank iced lattes outside Everybody’s Recordsin the first muggy Cincinnati summer that I pretendedto like coffee. Thought it made me older. Boughtthe Black Keys vinyl with the fried...
All He Could Do Was Hold His Hand

All He Could Do Was Hold His Hand

Which his father did when the balloon string slipped from his fingers. Which was weird. His father had never held his hand in public before. Years later he wondered if his father wanted to keep him that day from floating off, too. At the time, though, they stood...