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Mrs. Winchester VIII. The Witch's Cap

Mrs. Winchester VIII. The Witch's Cap

There came one day a knock on the door - a jaunty, insistent, rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat that was so annoyingly sure of itself I declined to answer. Now, you have all been at home, heard a strange knock, and declined to answer it. And you’ve all quietly slipped to a room

Mrs. Winchester VII. The Grand Ballroom

Mrs. Winchester VII. The Grand Ballroom

If you deem a house with a ballroom extravagant, you will deem a house with two ballrooms flagrant. This house indeed has two ballrooms, for one good reason: the far ballroom is for the living; this Grand Ballroom, is for the dead. Regrettably neither has had much use. I have

Mrs. Winchester VI. The Bath Room

Mrs. Winchester VI. The Bath Room

Welcome to the bathroom - my favorite room in the house! There are thirteen bathrooms on the premises, and they are all my favorite room in the house. For someone who lives in a mansion alone, I have a ridiculous amount of company: builders clomping from one end of the

Mrs. Winchester V. A Table for One

Mrs. Winchester V. A Table for One

The dining room. But this dining room. A secret dining room - off the kitchen, and down one and twelve steps to what previously, I believe, was a pantry. A single chair and a small table. For one. For me. From a very young age, I have thought that eating

Mrs. Winchester IV. The Kitchen

Mrs. Winchester IV. The Kitchen

When I decided to expand Llanada Villa, my first thought was, of course, “Where to begin?” This led to an unexpected second thought: “Which room in a house is the most important?“ A pointless question, as pointless as wondering which part of a body is the most important. Each is

Mrs. Winchester III. A Stair, a Door, a Window

Mrs. Winchester III. A Stair, a Door, a Window

There are forty stairways in the house; this is one: thirteen steps that terminate… at the ceiling. You might think it a stairway that leads nowhere. You might think it for those unimpeded by physical barriers. You might think it a joke. Or, if you climb the stairs and find

Mrs. Winchester II. The Hearth

Mrs. Winchester II. The Hearth

Mr. Chekhov says, “ A gun in the first act must go off in the third”. But what if it’s a one-act play? Or… what if you are in the third act of your life, and the gun - or guns - went off in the first? What then? There,

Mrs. Winchester I. The Foyer

Mrs. Winchester I. The Foyer

Why? Why would the sole resident of a perfectly accommodating California farmhouse transform it into a sprawling, seven-story mansion of six-hundred rooms, forty stairways, at least as many fireplaces, three elevators, thousands of windows, two ballrooms, and a séance parlor? Why? This is the question I most often am asked,

Still Hungry

At Nathan's Coney Island on the Fourth of July, I ate more hot dogs than anyone alive.

American Epic

In the wee hours before the test, he drank coffee, rolled cigarettes, and read Baudelaire. The test itself he named "Trinity", after one of John Donne's Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to

Heartache for $100

Heartache for $100

Bill "The Buzzer" Boatwright loved knowledge. He loved trivia. Loved facts and statistics. First thing every morning, he reached for his bedside almanac to learn what occurred that date in history, then, flush with tidbits, went to make coffee, and wait for his slow-rising wife. “Today, May 14th,

Sweet Sal by the Sea

Sweet Sal by the Sea

Young Sal of Nantucket - a good boy, a sweet boy. Orphaned young, and raised by a rum-drunk, salt-tongued, near-blind lobster trap named Jenny, who gummed corn-cob pipes, muttered "Jack Damn Tar!" for no observable reason, and fed him on shanties and legends of the brine more than

The End of My Rope

The End of My Rope

She was quiet, and kept to herself. She was not "unmarried" but disinclined to marry. She managed a small farm, and in the evening read books, including, but not exclusively, The Bible. In Salem, Massachusetts, Becky Woods engaged in social activity, though, it seemed, obligingly. Her gaze made

Able, Unwilling

Minor Motion Pictures

Able, Unwilling

Unwitting, unwilling Able (given name lost to time), born innocent, like all of us, and expendable, like some of us, was a rhesus macaque monkey of Kansas sent by NASA into the void to test the effects of space flight on mammals. The Russians had sent a dog. Those Russians.

Take a Knee

Born 1949 in Washington D.C., veteran of a lost war, citizen of a nation in debt to its ideals, Eddie Fellows has seen trouble. Enough trouble. A reluctant but willing viewer of the news cycle chronicling the world in his eighth decade, he sees what seems endless trouble. His

I Hear America Singing

Minor Motion Pictures

I Hear America Singing

Was it the golden light gracing the whole of New York Harbor as he crossed Brooklyn Ferry? Was it the new sensibility - expansive, liberating, imperative - he found in the pages of Emerson? Or was it the never-to-be-forgotten kiss upon his child's cheek by the Marquis de