Buckfast Abbey
I am probably the only Jew in Brooklyn with an uncle who is a monk and a priest at Buckfast Abbey, but that is my confused family heritage. That was apparently his ambition from...
Road Trips and Resistance Blog
Fragility and Minefields
Never post anything to the internet when you are in pain. In fact, it is probably a good idea to never post anything except cat photos. But I am getting ahead of myself. I...
Viv Rynne
It’s a miracle I learned to write. I was never very good at it in school, and unlike Stephen King I did not write a newspaper as a teenager, or edit a school magazine....
My Father: James Patrick Courtney
It was 3 a.m. in the morning for my sister when she messaged me. It was about our father.
Best Pizza in the World
Some people swear by John’s Pizzeria on Bleeker Street. And many believe that there is no such thing as pizza outside the five boroughs, and definitely not in Chicago. But not so. When I...
Skydiving
Before kids, three of us decided to go skydiving. Tandem jump strapped to an instructor, just go, get kitted up, jump out of a plane. Our wives got wind of the plan. We probably...
Identity
I called a friend who does not identify on the binary gender spectrum “she”, not “they”, and was rightfully called out for it. It was impolite, and politeness is important to me. That is...
The Best Hospital Food In the World
I am writing this in my bed in Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan, where the staff are extremely friendly and competent, and I have a gallstone problem that is very routine for...
The Doorstep
Jon was five years young. In those years in England, children of six would walk themselves home from school. But for the first year of school, the front of the school would mill with...
Paradise on Blue Bell Hill
Jeremy and I were brothers, born just short of twelve months apart. From our earliest recollections we had always been together, two against the world. Kids then were free range, and this Easter vacation...