Photo of Putneyville, Pennsylvania, by Dale Johnson. All rights reserved. 1. The Pittsburgh Chain Shift uniquely identifies Southwestern Pennsylvania. Neither tectonic nor glacial, it is a linguistic distinction. As the nineteenth century Scotch Irish, English, and...
We’re walking in San Francisco and it’s getting late. I’m here in The City and it has been such a long time. A lot of time has passed. A lot of heavy time. It weighs on me as I return to familiar places and I feel aged, but you have to pronounce it...
Photo: Damian Pankowiec / Shutterstock.com Jewellery’s never been my thing. But when I saw you in those silver earrings, I wanted to own all the earrings ever made, just so some could look half as good on me. They weren’t even real silver—you said you bought them for...
Photo by Boston Public Library / CC BY-NC 2.0 We show our love by slurping oysters, three dozen to be exact—two dozen raw and unadorned, a dozen served “dirty,” splattered with sour cream, red onion and red lump caviar. All doused with lemon and Tabasco. Dad and I are...
My feet are cold. They remind me of that one week in Iowa. I look at my feet. I don’t like to think about that week in Iowa. It was not a good week in Iowa. I keep looking at my feet. They are covered in cotton—frayed and tubed. I can feel every inch of me forgetting...
On a marble bench in Villa Borghese, Rome glowing in its June glory, the boy tells the girl this is not the right time, his school year abroad is only about to start. She knows, of course, but it’s only now she’s found the courage. Now, after 9 months of...
