I was in the fifth grade the winter my grandmother and mother took my brother and me out of Georgia school to go live in St. Augustine, Fla, and look for a house to buy. We rented an apartment on Oneida Street, a few blocks from where the shrimp boats…

When you were that young and horny at the same time, and the only thing that stood between you and the deliciously compliant object of your affections was 300 miles of state highways through darkest Georgia, you tended to put the hammer down every single weekend. You’d be laying rubber…

From the dedication in this novel: — I’d like to dedicate A Matter of Logistics to John W. Campbell, Jr., who really liked the novella of the same title I submitted to him in 1968 — liked it so well he said turn it into a novel and I will buy it. Of course he had a…

Doris Lessing’s name came up in conversation last night. The computer was right there so my lady-love and I addressed Google Brain. As is usual in these forays the Lessing search expanded to everything from a Chicago union activist and official Commie with whom she shared a relationship once to sufism and other disciplines the Persia-born author explored, her life in Africa, all her books we missed or never heard of; a respectful obit in The Guardian that offered many leads to lovers, friends, other writers, and people she mentored. We saw a dozen books by her and others we want to read now.

She did not send the sad love letter she wrote after the events described below. She gave it to me after a lot more water under the bridge. I found it fifty years later in a Rubbermaid tub full of notes, manuscripts and correspondence from a life lived on paper. The ink was faded. The words were fresh, as if sadness has no shelf life. How did Faulkner phrase it? The past is not dead. It isn’t even the past.

Last night I got the one-line email about death of a woman with whom I experienced a complicated relationship long ago. Another death to mourn. I’m pushing eighty and the older you get the more that happens. Over the years I’d done what writers do…written about her, name changed of…

Eisenhower Statue at Gettysburg College. From Gettysburg tourist promotion.Used to illustrate a “State of Control” chapter called Saturday in Gettysburg: “He turned alongside Gettysburg College with its weathered statue of Eisenhower. …

A one-line text from a friend’s phone last night: “I assume you know C. passed away?” I did not know. Her son tried to call me but my phone is long extinct. Another loss to mourn, this one the woman a virginal 20-year-old newspaper copy boy erroneously believed the love of his life. Over time I did what writers do: wrote about it. …

Never know when the Yahoo news feed will surprise me with a sudden flashback. Tonight it was a report on Bret Michaels, evidently a popular singer and musician. “Evidently” I say, because I never was a fan of rock and roll, or further devolutions of American music that followed. Classical…