. . . any man’s death diminishes me, Because I am involved in mankind. And therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee. John Donne 1624 Back in December, 2014, the day after the Newtown Massacre, I wrote about my own experience with a…

Rachel Louise Snyder’s Women We’ve Buried, Women We’ve Burned One of my favorite workshops to teach is something I call “Acting for Writers.” It’s a class that investigates how to put ourselves in closer touch with our sense and emotional memory, the way actors do. After all, I explain, actors…

It’s an odd thing to be a sister whose little brother has died. The sister is not the wife who tended to him for 42 years, who devoted her existence to making sure he lived longer than anyone could have predicted. The sister is not responsible for orchestrating his diabetes care, his two kidney transplants,… Originally published at https://carlastockton.me on March 12, 2023.

Leave a comment Few people knew of my family as well as the denizens of Saranac Lake, our hometown in upstate NY. We were eminently recognizable, especially to our fellow congregants of the First United Methodist Church. There was no missing us. Every Sunday, with the consistency of a Swiss…

Every summer until I was four, my mother’s older sister Herma and her Serbian artist husband Borislav invited the whole family to share their bungalow on a beach along the Long Island Sound in New London, CT. My memory of the house — undoubtedly flawed by time and distance —…

A Rant: The Trouble With Guns. Columbine changed my relationship to America. Once upon a time, I was proud and unabashedly grateful to be a part of this remarkable experiment called the USA. Then suddenly, in a blaze of terror, fifteen children were brutally assassinated, 24 more were wounded, and…

I was nine in 1957, when my father wrenched us from our Longmeadow, MA, home and relocated us to Saranac Lake, NY. The trip, in those days, was a long one. None of the endless interstates we now take for granted existed. The journey took us along country roads through western New England, and we… Originally published at https://carlastockton.me on February 12, 2023.

I love finding absurd email subject lines in my inbox. “You matter to me” from______(big star), and “A Heartfelt Thanks to You from Bernie Sanders.” Personal? Ha! Even if I were a fan of the star, even if I liked Bernie Sanders, I would find the notions suggested in the…

Elder Rant Part III This will be short. Robert Reich, whom I greatly admire, has posted a piece that has permeated my consciousness by way of every media outlet I so much as glance at. He posits that the impoverished children of America have been abandoned, that the country has…