I peel leaf-colored clumps from my shovel. The clay carries memories, art class, wonders of the kiln, the rabbi’s head on a silver dish atop my grandmother’s mahogany table, forever pliable and moist, sculptures adorning the

The presidential scholar drips delicate fingers down his chin. With smooth, white, Ivy-infused certitude, he promises. Our institutions are strong. We will be just fine.   Let’s hope, the anchor replies, profusely praising his brilliance, deftly slipping into

Animals go loony when earthquakes and volcanoes gather their murderous forces. But dogs and owners sleep silently even as teachers in the hamlets of West Virginia summon the courage of miners and rich kids

He sits like one of the park’s statues, knit cap pulled down to his eyes, blanket tugged up to his mouth, five rotten teeth his most memorable feature. I put a dollar in

In 1970, after dropping out of college in Washington, D.C., I moved to Baltimore where I lived in a row home still heated by a coal furnace on West

The evening before, sands were a flea market. Bronze pen shells, necklaces of barnacles, Purple urchins, mottled purse crabs, spotted like the barrels of paint horses, ivory bivalves picked clean as steamers after the feast. Shoppers

Same guy, ponytail now gray, still strong, enduring as the word, scrappy. Larry the legend, busted ass, eight hours in the mill, then, on sweltering afternoons, hammered shingles onto steep roofs, hit the bar at nightfall, sucked down a few beers, did

Even toward its center, the lake is growing shallow, farmland it had mercilessly flooded now fighting back, rebellion stoked by the runoffs from its cousins still under plow. Suddenly, my kayak slips

In the distance, behind a sign advertising 3,300 acres for lease, A steel mill is meeting what free market economists call Creative destruction. Two years after the shutdown, the searing pain of