On January 3rd at 3 a.m. my very first grandson, Luca Maliek Timothy Donovan was born. He’s well. Mama and Dad are getting better and asking the age old questions, “how do I keep him alive?” and “what have I done?” Here is a poem for little Luca from John…
“Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be Notorious.” Rumi Today I started teaching a class “Living Out Loud ” for the Transformative Language Arts Network . The first class addresses how fear and shame silence us. What do we fear when we consider sharing a…
I told myself, “It’s just a chair. Get rid of it. It’s only a chair.” Ah, but what a chair. Big, soft, comfy, and a recliner. A real chair. A sit back, put your legs up, pop the top, watch tv, fall asleep in, and drool kind of chair. A…
My father, Carl Carpenter, was seventeen years old and a junior in St. Mary’s Catholic High School in Clayton, New York when he enrolled in the National Guard to “make a buck on a Saturday morning.” Every weekend he and a bunch of guys from Clayton hitchhiked to Armory Square…
It took my Aunt Marguerite several hours to realize my Uncle Eddard wasn’t dozing. He was dead. “Well, that man never did talk much,” she said in her own defense. I know you’re not suppose to laugh at funerals or at the bedsides of the dying but when my father’s…