Month

This is going to take a little explaining. During the first couple years of my marriage, when we lived in Wanaque, New Jersey, I did the weekly laundry for the two of us at a rinky-dink, down-home establishment called the Midvale Laundromat. In a previous incarnation, however, the place was known as Peggy’s Wash & Fold. I thought (in my fiction writer’s brain) that the earlier name was much better than its replac

July the Fourth, the family and I were relaxing in the house when we heard a crack-crack-cracking noise, followed by a loud crash, followed by an even louder crash. I turned my head to catch the last moments of what we all knew had happened: one of the big trees fell in the backyard, taking a couple smaller ones with it. No one was hurt, no property damaged. But the event was unnerving because it happened without war