Boob

Boob

    I. “Just look at those boobies,” my mother said. I had never heard her utter the word “boob” before, let alone “boobies.” We were a missionary family, stopping to see relatives in Finland before moving permanently (terrifyingly)...
Ed Milk

Ed Milk

  I met Ed Milk when I was working as a reporter for a chain of community newspapers in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn in the late seventies. A week after he came on staff I was fired for having signed a petition for a writers’ union, so we never had the chance to get...
Open House in Open Season

Open House in Open Season

We thought it the ultimate frontier. Not for the curbside windshield shards or Thumbelina’s dollhouse—four lopsided floors and a staircase that twirled from one tiny room to the next. Not even for a price tag that could fit inside a mouse hole in the plaster wall. It...
Deep Listening

Deep Listening

The Concert It was a Friday night and Pauline Oliveros of the Deep Listening Institute was giving a concert in a converted warehouse in downtown Boston. It was a large space with girders; everything painted brightly and divided into many rooms and studios. I followed...
Tumbling Upwards

Tumbling Upwards

This conference room could be in any country, any town: a pale wooden podium, bright overhead lighting, an army of white-clothed tables and a carpet with loud corporate swirls. The difference is with the babies. So many babies: some held in slings close to foster...