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ALTHOUGH Mulligan’s, the miniature golf course in my neighborhood, is now closed for the season, I still get the tiniest of buzzes when I spy the simple fairways and the concrete moose en route to or from the freeway. Mind you, my desire to play miniature golf is right up there with my desire to eat excessively-sweetened breakfast cereal while watching cheaply-produced Saturday morning television. Nevertheless, the p

I received an email today from someone I don’t know named Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner. Here is the opening text. It’s Thanksgiving Eve! I’m making pies — apple, pumpkin, AND another pumpkin, and wondering if I should make a fourth. There’s a lot to celebrate, and a lot of work ahead, but this Thanksgiving, I’m feeling profoundly grateful — for YOU, and this whole community. Thank you. Well, for today, that kind of sums t

reprinted with minor edits from Mandala, Vol. 11; St. Louis Park High School; May, 1979 I. “Thumbs, Thumbs, Thumbs?” That’s all I hear. The monotonous, repetitive wailing cry of an armada of rancid soldiers. Three men in Salvation Army uniforms hold me at gunpoint, commanding: “GIVE US THE SECRET TO THE AARDVARK DANCE.” “Will the boxstep do?” I quip. They, with quiet, ruthless efficiency promptly blow my head off. II

What have I been up to? Well, I was pawing through boxes of old stuff and came across a Mandala from my senior year of high school. Mandala was (and possibly remains) the school’s literary magazine, written and edited by the student body. The contributors were the usual suspects: the future math professor, the future best-selling journalist and author, the future Improbable Research Limerick Laureate, the future frie

Last Monday evening, my wife dropped off our son, age 13, for his weekly class with the rabbi and youth director and the other teenagers of our congregation. I came by at 8 o’clock or so, about a half hour before dismissal, to hang out with the parents. Apart from the receptionist buzzing everyone into the building, the evening proceeded and felt like any other. Of course the rabbi discussed the recent shooting

Invites the occasional guest To sit by the coffee table and Page through academic journals That are too boring to read Properly. The visitors to my office Are few and far between And generally they camp out elsewhere Or conduct their business quickly. No one tarries in reception For very long. So sometimes I imagine that I will arrive to find You on the couch. Waiting for me, patiently. I greet you warmly And then we

I entered one of the defining questions of my life into the Google search engine. The returned links discussed cast changes on a popular British television baking show. Steven Wright asked, “If you’re driving at the speed of light and you turn on your headlights, would they do anything?” The dialogue in a recent Doctor Who sneaked in the phrase, “Stronger Together”, which was the slogan

IV. My lover once confessed to me, “I am a terrible man.” I asked him why he thought so. “I have all these faults and weaknesses, That I am forced to face too often. I make my excuses, And then feel miserable For the rest of the day.” That was half a lifetime ago. Now, I wonder if I had misheard a homonym. Maybe he was, or should have been, Comparing himself to Tissue paper. V. For Halloween,

I. I felt guilty, so I pulled Into the Redemption Center. But all they wanted were My bottles and cans. II. Now that fall has arrived in New England, My husband is wearing his black leather jacket With the matching cowboy hat That he picked up at a flea market On our vacation to Florida. He says that he looks a little like Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit. I tell him, just once, “No. You don’t.̶