O-L-I [Outside Looking In]

Feliz and me in Sedgwick, Maine, circa 2002. We're posing in front of a spruce sapling planted in memory of a cousin.   My father had an...

Mom in the garden of Baghdad's Zia Hotel in 1957. Just from her posture and facial expression, you can tell how hot it was for this girl...

My father's desk chair for his little home office. Mom got it for him in the 1970s from a mail-order company . It arrived as a kit which...

  One of this spring's heavily-scented blossoms on our backyard's enormous magnolia tree, just as it was opening. Do you smell? I do...

(Note:  This essay was originally posted in 2017.  I have revised it to better depict the humanity of a relative I never knew.) I have an un...

  My father as a Brooklyn teenager Was your father ever in a street gang? Growing up in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood, my Dad's ...

  Do you know what these are? Most men today hardly ever dress up, but those who do can likely identify these as... cuff-links!  They're...

  My family's last collie, Feliz.  He hated having his picture taken! Update 8/20/25:  I learned today from a neighbor that people who ...

I am a board member of the Heart of Arlington Neighborhood Association in central Arlington, Texas. I'd been asked to write up some info...