More than 30 years ago the Supreme Court in the United States ruled that if individuals are mentally ill but not criminally insane they cannot be confined to asylums. They must be allow...

Loud preacher bellows on Sunday what a silent praying mantis knows Donal Mahoney

Tea in the afternoon with his wife of many years is usually peaceful, Hubert thinks before he makes his announcement. Then he says it. “I’m going upstairs,” Hubert tells Ruth as he hois...

Ten years ago, when they were tykes just in their 70s, Melvin used to tell Emma eat your Wheaties

Willie in his 80s now hadn’t made sense in years. His wife understood his grunts from the recliner where she propped him up

November’s lovely in the rain, she… from her rocker near the window to no one in particular although the butler’s waiting for her groce… having walked her Pekingese.

After two thousand years we still have folks who blame the Jews for killing Christ even though Pilate the Gentile could have

The other day I was talking to a neighbor who said he has found a way to help the poor and improve our environment simultaneously. It’s no secret, he said, that we have a dire food shor...

A tractor trailer with slats and m… pulls up at a city slaughterhouse. The driver pulls the wrong lever and two thousand pounds of trotting cattle go for an easy

“Damn the vernal equinox! Full speed ahead!” is all that Cootie Murphy would ever say when he sat on the last stool at the end of the bar in The Stag & Doe Inn. He wouldn’t say it very ...

Since kindergarten Darius and Cla… have ridden the same bus to school from the city to way out in the su… They’re the only black kids in 8th… Their schoolmates have welcomed th…

Dad hit me only once, an uppercut to the solar plexus. It nearly lifted me off my feet. I was 17 then and already fairly tall, 6’1.” He was 48 and of medium height, 5’8,” a fireplug who...

Holiday Parties Millie comes home bawling from another holiday party and Willie asks what’s the problem. Millie says her friends are cheese…

I wish he had never come out from behind the stove, that spider I stepped on at 4 a.m. He was a big one bothering no one.

The late Justice Scalia, a strict conservative on the Supreme Court, would have voted in favor of prayer