• People

    Happy Birthday, Babci

    Last night I was perusing housing listings in my hometown, and I eventually browsed my way over to Google Earth where I looked up the house where my mother and her three sisters had grown up. It was on Blatchley Ave in New Haven – or Fair Haven – Connecticut. This was a modest home, to say the least, a very small house with small rooms and a small backyard, on a street that was not known to be very well-off or safe (I do love understatement). My mother and her sisters grew up quite poor, though both of my grandparents worked very hard in rather arduous jobs. My Grampa…

  • Brill family graves at Shiloh Cemetery
    General

    Among the Bones – an introduction

    I collect bones… Skulls and fingers and teeth from smiling jaws, I dig up, brush off, and polish smooth. Many now I have, piled high around me. I know their faces, their voices, can see their walk and hear their laughter. Among the bones I find truth in and of my past. I can search through what these bones really are: names and faces, and words written on faded paper in old-fashioned writing. I have come to know those who have come before, as if I am indeed holding them in my hand, solid and smooth. Once I visited a graveyard in the most perfect spot I could imagine. It…