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Month: May 2018

Redemption, a plane ride away

I lived in the basement of a bare-bulb Midtown Kansas City apartment building. My place qualified as one of those dim dwellings landlords build into the bowels of their buildings to squeeze the last dimes out their real estate. It had two rooms, a front room with a kitchenette and…

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Furious Gazelle publishes the story of my suicide and mental hospital stay

True story: One Saturday in spring 2011, I was in the basement tying a knot in a rope to hang myself. Son Nick called to me from the living room, changing everything. He literally saved my neck. Furious Gazelle, a sprightly literary magazine, has published the account of my suicide.…

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The value of space: The crowded and unhappy life of Henry Fontaine Jackson

Henry Fontaine Jackson wanted to see the world in black and white. No furniture. No Audrey Hepburn.   He dreamed of emptiness.   If that vision was Spartan, it was by design. Lack of foresight complicated everything. Even if he looked lived like a twenty-year-old dope smoker with a job…

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End of semester conundrum

The end of the semester always portends disaster. Like everyone, teachers and students, about mid-semester, things just seem to slow down. Mired in intellectual and psychic syrup, we slog through, hoping that just around the corner, there will be a light, however dim. It will show us the way. The…

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