A group of older men gather once a week to talk about life after a heart attack. Old Len chews tobacco still and tells jokes in a voice so low

The guillotine dropped between you and a friend over coffee and small talk. The first time it dropped it was someone who said

An article in the paper reports something one doesn’t see happen in America very often. Eighty billionaires, millionaires and others close to that level

After World War II before television, before women had tattoos before men wore earrings, I was a child in a world

The two weeks I spent in that small town on assignment, I saw no blacks except for two older women regal in every way,

When Fred was a boy, he heard his… talk about Grandpa going to town d… to sell the bounty of his harvest. On his farm he had eggs, butter an… vegetables and meat. He’d buy suga…

Like the poor the sparrows we will always have with us, my neighbor lady tells me as she feeds the birds

It was the first time that senators had been asked to go home and address parent-teacher meetings at all the middle schools in their states. Each had been given a sheet of talking point...

America has no caste system but America has castes. Like every other nation America has its rich and poor with everyone else sardined

Deep into a warm winter the Japanese red maple keeps her crown of brilliant leaves as if to prove to the evergreens especially that big blue spruce

Gram tells Stella on the phone her neighborhood is full of old fo… She hasn’t seen Stella in 60 year… and won’t see her again because of the canyon of miles between the…

Something’s still bright when a widow dies and her son flies in gives her body to science has the movers

Through the window I see the sun fire up for the last time today. There are jays in the trees near the meadow,

We’re all salmon swimming upstream until the job’s done. Some of us know it and some of us don’t.

From my stool in the diner I watc… the old woman with elm tree arms command the big booth in back and roar for a menu, take a half hour to read it