(These are excerpts—click on the title to view the whole piece!)

Brighton Beach Memory and a Souvenir of 9/11

Even in my youth those planes were old, sometimes WWI-vintage biplanes. It's a business, after all. Someone is paying the pilot who, I imagine, had higher goals in mind when he trained to fly. Maybe he's a veteran who used to fly supersonic fighters, down on his luck. I picture him in the cockpit today, angry, full of contempt for the human ants below, and not entirely sober.

Thomas J. Hubschman

 

Down the Plymouth Road (Series Four)

I was walking down the Plymouth Road with the Rabbi, and we were not alone. We were walking with the Man of Constant Sorrow and the Man of Constant Rage. And I did not know how we had come to be in their company.

Stanley Jenkins

 

Down the Plymouth Road (Series Five): Sanguinis Christi (Blood of Christ)

Where I was once fearless, lithe, strong, and clueless, I am now fearful, rude, compromised, and informed. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. Every time you play out more string for the kite in the wind, you slacken the muscles to draw it back in. If you're not careful, that string is going to snap. It's going to go beyond your control. You're not going to be able to reel it back in. It's going to snap. We weaken with every resistance overcome. It just takes a while to feel it in your bones, your muscles, your body that keeps betraying you.

Stanley Jenkins