Lighthouse

 

There's a lighthouse on the north side of Roosevelt Island here in NYC in the middle of the massive, dangerous East River. It was built in 1872 and designed by James Renwick, Jr.  

 

There are legends about the lighthouse that say a patient from a nearby Lunatic Asylum built a stone fort on the site fearing a British invasion. The fort was later demolished to make way for the lighthouse. To commemorate the story of the patient’s involvement there is an inscription near the lighthouse that reads: “All ye who do pass by may pray for his soul when he dies”.  

 

In the long distant past when my longtime partner died and he was unceremoniously cremated, I had his remains for a while and during that time his soul was restless. Things would go missing; tragedy struck my life, and nothing was right. I knew it was time for him to rest. While alive he liked to fish and enjoyed rivers and oceans.  

 

As a final farewell I wrote prayers and took my daughters to the lighthouse. The three of us had our own ceremony and released his ashes in the East River. From that moment on peace returned, and his restless soul was in repose. All unusual activities stopped and never returned. 

 

All we have left are memories and a lighthouse on the north side of Roosevelt Island in NYC in the middle of the massive, dangerous East River.

Georgia

THE GUILTY PLEASURES OF A LITERARY CORNUCOPIA OF CATALOGS AND RELATED LITERARY COLLECTIBLES

 

Book Row existed from the 1890s to the 1960s on fourth Avenue between Union Square and Astor Place.

By the 1960s skyrocketing rents had whittled away at the inhabitants of book Row until a few financially strapped survivors were able to limp away from the exorbitant rents to set up their stores elsewhere, while others dissolved into literary obscurity. I would have liked to visit those stores that did not make the cut. One of the survivors was the Strand Bookstore which landed at Broadway and E. 12th St. in the East village. Today it is the only survivor from Book Row. One of the survival techniques used by the Strand was a long series of wheeled book wagons which are parked perpendicular to the perimeter of the store surrounding it and supplying the casual passerby, of meager means, with an extremely wide diversity of reading materials, and all at very low prices.

There are many old books, some practically falling apart, which no self-respecting bookworm would choose to inhabit. There are old periodicals and catalogues of every description and subject. I once purchased an auction catalog published by Sotheby’s, at the Strand, for $.50, an extreme bargain compared to the cost of participating in the actual auction while still owning the objects of your fancy in a sense, although not in possession of the physical objects.

The spending of a few intended minutes can turn into hours as your arms become heavy with the accumulation of literary treasures that you cannot pass up, all the while moving around your fellow shoppers in a choreographed dance through the narrow aisles, while trying not to drop your selections. Eventually, you must enter the store to pay for your newly acquired treasures, wherein the passive- aggressive strategy of the Strand pays off, as you are overwhelmed by the size of the literary world that you have been unwittingly lured into like the webs of Shelob in the Lord of the Rings , laid out for Frodo and Company under Mordor, or the Sirens of Anthemoessa Island in the Odyssey luring the sailors to their ruin. In this case, it is a positive experience and you will be enriched by this experience far beyond the few dollars spent on your purchases.

Jim-August 1, 2026

Bun Bun the Bunny

 In a meadow filled with blooming daisies lived a little rabbit named Bun Bun. He had a kind heart and greeted every creature with a smile—a bee, a field mouse, and even a grumpy old owl. 

If someone needed help, Bun Bun never hesitated. He carried acorns for the squirrels, shared clover with hungry rabbits, gently freed butterflies from spider webs, rebuilt broken birds' nests, helped mice carry seeds, and gathered twigs for the grumpy old owl. 

The forest became a warmer, happier place because his kindness bloomed in every heart. 

Bun Bun knew that kindness grows when it is shared. 

Moral: Kindness has a way of spreading from one heart to another.

Georgia

Look at the Book

 

After thinking about it for a while, I must confess I find great pleasure in collecting and reading through recipe books. What I realize is that I enjoy buying them and looking through all the recipes, but I don’t or very rarely create a dish from one of them and serve it.

Books containing every single type of chocolate recipe makes me go, “oooh,” and “aaah,” despite the fact that as much as I love chocolate I never even tried one delicious recipe.

I also like cookbooks that have two hundred pages of only chicken recipes. I will sit and read through recipe after recipe, yet I will still go back and cook my own tried and true chicken dishes.

I even have a cookbook where each recipe uses all kinds of exotic spices. I broke down and prepared one of these very spicey recipes which contained a large amount of curry powder. I invited my mother and aunt over for dinner so they could try my creation.

I don’t think either one of them ever had curry in their lives. It was obvious by the amount of beer they drank to wash it down. The next time they came over for dinner, they brought take-out!

Ellen G.

Favorite Reads

 

I know it's cheating but when I find a book that may be too long to read, I find it on audio. My favorites are psychology, religion, crime and horror. 

I listened to Speak It into Reality by Napoleon Hill, Buddha by Karen Armstrong, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and my favorite horror book Frankenstein by Mary Shelly.  

I find the audio books from my local library, and I find hearing the words adds a lot of life to the story.  

I have always loved books in any form.  

 Georgia

Two from Georgia P.

 Assignment: July 4, 2026

 Through a Child's Eyes

 

I know kitty understands me when I talk to him. His nose wiggles and his eyes shine. I pet him gently because I love him. Kitty is the best thing in the whole world.

Assignment July 11, 2026

 Dog Days of Summer

 

I am not a summer person. On those dog days of summer, you'll find me happily camped out in front of my 12,000 BTU air conditioner. Wake me up when it's October.

Memories of Imagination

 

IMMERSED IN A SEA OF COLORFUL RIBBONS AND BOWS AND CRUMPLED GIFT PAPER TORN APART CARELESSLY, I STARED IN AWE AT MY BRAND-NEW ROBOT COMMANDO, WHO COULD THROW ORANGE CANNON BALLS STORED IN HIS ARMS AND FIRE MISSILES FROM THE TOP OF HIS HEAD! MY ARMY OF LEAD AMERICAN SOLDIERS WERE NO MATCH FOR ROBOT COMMANDO! WHAT TOY COULD EXEMPLIFY PEACE ON EARTH AND GOODWILL TOWARDS MEN ANY BETTER THAN A MONSTER ROBOT WHO COULD DECIMATE ENTIRE ARMIES WITH A FEW CANNON BALLS AND MISSILES! I WAS IN ECSTASY WHILE MY FINGERS WERE STICKY FROM THE CANDY CANE I HAD BEEN CONSUMING.

THE ELVES MUST HAVE WORKED AROUND THE CLOCK TO PRODUCE ALL THE TOYS NECESSARY FOR THIS BONANZA, WHILE SANTA DELIVERED THEM IN THIS HIS 13TH LABOR OF HERCULES, TO THE HOMES OF LITTLE BOYS AND GIRLS ALL OVER THE WORLD, AND IN ONE NIGHT!

THIS WAS THE BEST CHRISTMAS MORNING EVER….

SOMEONE WAS CALLING MY NAME….

“MR. LAPLACE!”

“MR. LAPLACE!”

“COME DOWN FROM YOUR CLOUD, MR. LAPLACE!”

OH NO, IT WAS NOT CHRISTMAS MORNING. I WAS IN THIRD-GRADE HOMEROOM WITH SISTER M*** X*****!

“MR. LAPLACE, I AM SORRY TO INFORM YOU THAT WHILE YOU MAY FIND THE TIMES TABLES BORING, THERE WILL COME A TIME IN YOUR LIFE WHEN IT WILL BE NECESSARY TO KNOW THEM. PLEASE PAY ATTENTION AND SEE ME AFTER CLASS TO PICK UP A NOTE FOR YOUR PARENTS!”

OH NO, NOT ANOTHER NOTE HOME AND ANOTHER BLOT ON MY PERMANENT RECORD, NEVER TO BE EXPUNGED AND DRAGGED BEHIND ME FOR THE REST OF MY MORTAL LIFE, LIKE THE CHAINS AND LOCKBOXES OF JACOB MARLEY, ALWAYS THERE TO BE FEARED AND EXPLAINED AWAY ON JOB INTERVIEWS AND WHEN MEETING MY FUTURE IN-LAWS SOMEDAY!

THE NOTE I RECEIVED

Dear Mr. and Mrs. LaPlace,

Good afternoon, I am sorry to bring you more grave news, but your son James is persisting in drifting away with a lack of mental discipline on imaginary flights of fancy. Please try to control your son as we all know that nothing good can ever come from displays of imagination.

Sincerely yours,

Sister M*** X*****

MY SENTENCE ALSO INCLUDED A WEEK OF CLAPPING ERASERS.

JIM-JULY 26’

Untamed to Tame

 

I was a very unruly, wild, and untamed little girl and teenager. As a matter of fact, I was still pretty wild up until my mid-twenties. How untamed was I? So much so that when I was a teenager, I put myself and two friends in harm’s way.

It was an unbearably hot and humid day with temperatures reaching the high nineties even after the sun went down. There was a public pool called Cypress Pool on Jamaica Avenue. The pool was locked up for the night but I got the idea that all three of us should climb the fence and go swimming. We all agreed. It was so hot outside we didn’t care if we jumped in with our clothes on.

As soon as we jumped in the pool and started splashing around, we heard dogs barking and people talking loudly. All these sounds were getting closer and closer to us. Two large German Shepards reached the edge of the pool and they were growling, snarling, barking and showing their teeth. We thought we were going to be attacked by them.

Owners of the pool, this older couple, called off the dogs and told us to get out of the water immediately! We thought we would be arrested for trespassing. We got out of the pool and we were told to get on our way and never break into a public pool after it is closed for the night again.

The confrontation with the two guard dogs and the couple who owned the pool really tamed me. I kept wondering what if the couple wasn’t there to call the dogs off? No matter how hot the nights of summer got after that, I never tried to break into and go swimming in a public pool.

Ellen

Tamed

 

I once believed I was the one who cared for my cats. Over time I realized the truth. The small rituals of caring and moments of silence and companionship melted into a trust that tamed my heart. 

Georgia

Dinosaurs

 

In my childhood home we had a small backyard, and it had a huge rock that seemed older than everything around it.  My friend Billy and I would climb onto the rock and invent stories of giant dinosaurs that walked over it millions of years ago. We would lie beneath the stars and imagine what it would be like to live with dinosaurs and in our minds this ordinary rock transformed our imagination and wonder led to endless possibilities. 

Georgia

A Perfect Gift

 

Appreciation, admiration, adulation, adoration, attachment, amatory, all words of love. What is a greater perfect gift than love? All a perfect gift from my feral Tabby cat. He is a stray, street cat who has fallen in love with me and the feeling is totally mutual. Sure, you say, Why shouldn’t he love you? You feed him. ” Wrong!!! My husband feeds him. But I’m the one who pets hm, fondles him and cuddles him. The romance I have with Tabby Boy (I named him) is recent and amazing. I have already written 3 negative complaining, critical essays about this “nasty, ferocious, terrible Tabby.” This, my fourth is a whole turnaround about my delicious, adorable, lovable pussycat.

 

In the past, I had always felt mournful to have this pet that I couldn’t pet. Instead, with his extended sharp claws he would swat anyone who came too close causing torn hems and bleeding ankles. He appeared in my backyard one spring day last year as a fully formed adult feral tabby cat. He looked healthy, with his white bib and white shoes and stockings, well groomed. Where had he come from? Did someone feed this outdoor cat? Did he ever belong to someone? Where does he go when it rains, when it snows, when it is freezing cold? His clipped ear tells me that he was neutered. How did anyone get near this rascal?

 

What changed this feral feline into his gentle, delightful lovable perfect gift? It all was a slow development, with all the action initiated by Tabby Boy. With the advent of summer weather, I spent much of the day in my backyard. Tabby always chose to be present and slowly he began rubbing up against my ankles. He set the pace and his curiosity led him to explore the effect of his rubbing against a human. Shortly, he allowed me to rub his head, his neck, his back. When I moved down to a step close to the ground, he then rubbed my arm, my hand. The rest is history. Now he felt trust and totally allowed cuddling. This appreciation, admiration, adulation, adoration and attachment are a mutual perfect gift; a mutual taming.

 

Ethyl Haber

The Key in the Lock

 

As a senior in college, I wanted to make sure that going into the social services, in the field of mental healthcare, was something that I could be effective at. When I became aware that there was an opportunity to do a 1000- hour yearlong externship of volunteer work at QUEENS CHILDREN’S PSYCHIATRIC CENTER on the grounds of CREEDMORE PSYCHIATRIC CENTER, working with autistic children, some who also had multiple brain damage, I jumped at the opportunity to do something constructive and gain real- world experience before investing additional time and money into this field. The program consisted of working four hours per day, five days per week, for a 50-week year and being incorporated into the curriculum for these children. It included writing up progress reports and attending case- worker meetings as a member of the team for each assigned child.

B.F. Skinner was a professor at Harvard University who used behavioral modification to teach and alter behavior in patients, but he was criticized for his use of negative reinforcement for poor behavior. In the application of his techniques that we were to use, only positive reinforcement would be implemented to teach basic concepts such as identifying colors, basic mathematics, vocabulary and other elementary concepts. Praise, art& crafts, or treats such as favorite cookies or candy were employed to elicit a correct response depending on the preferences of the child. Progress was extremely slow, and most of the time it was statistically insignificant. It was difficult to come to work each day fully intending to accomplish something positive to improve the lives of these institutionalized children that I cared for when the desired outcome was rarely achieved. After a while the skeleton key that I used to enter the ward would alert my children of my arrival and they would come running down the hallway to greet me in their own way.

Over time and in different circumstances, I observed that many of the professionals who worked with these children seemed burned-out, physically present and completing their work, but without an emotional attachment. I’m sure that they had gone into this line of work with the best of intentions, but the daily grind had ground them down like an emotional gristmill. This must have been a sad realization after dedicating their lives to this work. I completed the program and received my certification at a dinner in our honor, although I had already decided that this line of work was not for me.

Ten years later, as a young father, I came home from work one day and put the key in the lock of our door and I heard my children running and yelling Daddy is home, Daddy is home! and as I opened the door and was assaulted by my army of little tykes I

realized in a moment of epiphany how my children from all those years ago had viewed my arrival on the ward each day. Those children entered the age of majority many years ago and most likely entered the adult population. The building is gone now, but I still wonder sometimes at how those unfortunate children fared in their challenging lives.

Jim -June 26’

Writing Assignment: The Devil's Dictionary"

 

Street Sweeper; an odd shaped vehicle that pushes leaves and trash from one side of the street to the other but never picks it up

 

Blender an electrical appliance that flips its lid without a moment's warning

 

Drone mechanical busy body having no regard or respect for the privacy of humans

 

Ellen G.

Writing Assignment: "REVISION"

 

My Comfy House

My house is a very comfortable home. I have lived in it for forty years. It is really time to redecorate but I don’t have that much cash lying around.

One early morning, I put the coffee pot on as I usually do. While I was waiting for the coffee to finish perking, I started watching the vapors rise from the top of the pot. All of a sudden, a beautiful genie, dressed in pink, formed out of the vapors. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” I asked in a fearful voice. The genie answered, “I am the household genie who came to redecorate your house.” She continued, "If you’ll let me, I will add a room on your second floor that will be just glorious..” She whispered in my ear her plans for the remodeling. When the genie was done filling me in, she got to work and designed a magical room,

Revised Copy

Coffee Pot Remodeling

Early one morning, I put the coffee pot on as usual. While waiting for the coffee to finish perking, I started watching the vapors rise from the top of the pot. All of a sudden, a beautiful genie, dressed in pink, as bright as a flamingo, formed out of the vapors. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” I asked in a cautious voice. The genie answered in a voice as smooth as peanut butter being spread on a piece of bread, “I am the decorating genie who comes to remodel your house.” She continued, “If you’ll let me, I will add a room to the second floor that will be just magnificent.” She whispered her plans for the changes in my ear. When the genie was done filling me in on her plans, she got to work and designed a beautiful room filled with magical touches.

Ellen G.

Re: "Noun"

 Cat Owner, noun: a person who believes they are the managed human of a small, furry, whiskered supervisor who is utterly convinced he runs the household.

Georgia

Epiphany

 

I had an epiphany the other day when I thought my cat was being aloof, but then realized in fact he was monitoring me with quiet, professional kitty curiosity. 

He treats “our” home as his territory, and I’m just one part of his operation. 

He scans each room, making mental notes of anything that’s changed. 

Even the way he sits—eyes half‑open; paws tucked neatly under his body—looks like he’s evaluating the space. 

He isn’t aloof at all; he’s simply gathering data, making sure our home runs smoothly. 

Georgia

Time Disappeared

 

I looked up from my painting, thinking only an hour had passed. The cerulean watercolor was almost dry on the palette. It was total darkness outside; the afternoon light had faded into night. My tea was completely cold, and I forgot it was there. It was bizarre, as if my mind stepped away into a parallel dimension. I didn’t regret a single second lost, though I was violently hungry.

Georgia

I Heard the Morning Birds

 

The little crowd of feathered optimist blackbirds swooped and glided into the warm morning light. 

I think they were showing off to the sparrows. 

They hop along the railing, waiting for the bread I set on the windowsill every morning. 

Confident that breakfast will simply appear. 

They trust that I’ll provide for them, and that trust feels like its own small comfort. 

Their chatter rises loud and bright, reminding me how even the darkest birds can make an ordinary day feel extraordinary. 

 Georgia

Journal Entry (by Georgia)

 

Walking to the store again for endless groceries, I felt myself surrendering to the same routine struggle. Milk, bread, fruit, and cat food. Forgot something, always something forgotten. The sky was gray and beginning to rain, the smell of wet pavement mixed with city pollution. 

Halfway home I noticed a white pigeon standing alone near the curb. Nearby the usual pigeons crowded together eating crumbs and arguing over scraps, but this bird seemed different somehow. Its soft white feathers glowed against the dirty pavement. It looked almost unreal, as though it had drifted in from another world and landed quietly among us. 

People rushed by without noticing, narrowly stepping around the feeding birds. The white pigeon remained calm and silent in the middle of all the movement and noise. 

I stopped walking just to watch. 

Its beauty interrupted the ordinary moment. Its little pink feet stepped carefully into a puddle while the wind lifted its feathers. Nearby was a grocery cart and a pile of litter, yet neither took away from the image of this peaceful creature moving gently through the chaos. 

Suddenly it flew straight upward with its wings wide open, startling me. Against the dark sky its white wings flashed brilliantly before disappearing into the rain clouds. 

For a moment I felt lighter somehow, lucky to have witnessed this small mystery of nature in the middle of a crowded city. 

Then life returned. I carried the groceries home, filled the refrigerator, and the errands continued. 

Assignment: Polyptoton - by Georgia

 

Polyptoton.  Like alliteration and assonance, its function is to give our sentences more musicality -- in particular, more rhythm by the repetition of sounds.  And like alliteration and assonance, it comes in two varieties. Basically, the first type of polyptoton is a sentence that uses a word more than once in a sentence, the second use usually being slightly different in that it appears in a different tense, or in a different part of speech, but the root of the word is the same.

The group looked at the painter who painted loneliness in all her paintings.  

Remembering the memory of that long ago rainstorm brought sadness.  

So deep was my sorrow that my sorrowful heart seemed to weep for its own sorrow. 

I dreamt of a distant world where grief was eased by dreaming.