Bespoke

Life

  • Tending What Grows: Life and Death in a Greenhouse

    Karen and I were once DINKs… Double Income, No Kids. We were young and relatively unencumbered. Karen taught high school math in Maple Shade, New Jersey. I practiced as a CPA — which meant I spent my days talking about… Continue reading

  • Beneath the Skin

    “Mr. Lem. Taylor, an old citizen of this county, last week, cut a minnie ball out of the upper part of his thigh he had been carrying in his body for twenty-five years.”   That was the first line of a… Continue reading

  • Writing, Baking, and Making Toys

    I’m writing a book. My daughter is baking and selling bread. My brother runs a wood shop, making wooden blocks for children. Continue reading

  • What Progress Can’t Measure: A Ripe Life

    My brother visited over Thanksgiving. He drove, sorry, he sat in a self-driving Tesla and never touched the steering wheel from Utica, New York, to Bartlesville. He brought apples from a local orchard. They were perfectly ripe—crisp, sweet, juicy. It… Continue reading

    What Progress Can’t Measure: A Ripe Life

  • Driving Through East Texas and the Garden of Gilgamesh

    “Why are we here?” Karen asked this nonchalantly, as if she were wondering why roosters have combs on their heads. I was hoping she was talking to herself—or that the question was rhetorical. But since we were driving to Houston,… Continue reading

  • Turn the Page

    If I could do it all again, I’d be a journalist—back when reporters smoked pipes, wore cardigans, and called in breaking news from pay phones. Journalism runs in my family. My uncle Rudy Taylor, cousin Andy Taylor, and cousin Jenny… Continue reading

    Turn the Page

  • Bless the Beasts and the Children

    Last night, Karen and I spent an evening at Kiddie Park. Some of the rides from my childhood are still operating. What an uplifting place. It exists for one reason. To make children laugh and smile. Not to mention the… Continue reading

  • Seven Hills

    I’ve always wanted to write a novel. The working title is Seven Hills (but may change as the arc of the story changes) I’m posting a chapter or two or three to see if anyone loves it or hates it… Continue reading

  • Save the Dancer

    A well-meaning friend once told me to dance like no one is watching. It didn’t take. I dance like people are watching. I was dancing at a wedding recently, (Apache, Jump on it) and it occurred to me that no… Continue reading

    Save the Dancer

  • Redeeming Beelzebub

    We have a cat I call Beelzebub. Not her given name, but one I feel she has earned, based on the trail of destruction imprinted on our household furnishings and her penchant for gluttony, which is, after all, what ole… Continue reading