Posts by Benjamin

It was a beautiful morning. The air was cool and damp, brushed by fog.  We set out for school together: Maggie and Abbi holding hands, Elsie, me and my bicycle lagging just behind. It was the second week of in-person classes, masked goodbyes, fingers crossed.  We hugged and waved. I stepped onto my bike, turned up Spotify, and shot off…

Today, for the fifth time in as many weeks, I opened a newsletter with the subject header, “You are going to LOVE this!” It was a form letter from a Musician’s Friend saleswoman, surely generated by my recent purchase of studio equipment. “This is Nakeisha, your Gear Advisor with Musician’s Friend. I am contacting you…

“Come upstairs!” Maggie, Elsie and I dashed from the sun room. I heard it as I leapt up the stairs two at a time: the unmistakable, high-pitched, steady-yet-disconcerting iPhone Alert. Though the girls and I were racing from one window-filled room to another as a vicious thunderstorm ripped through Wilmington, the implications of the alert…

Rockford Park is just one hundred steps out our front door. All summer, Abbi has been walking the girls down to a basketball court adjacent to a gravel-strewn baseball diamond they call “The Sand Lot.” Initially, they had been playing street hockey with a small group of friends. Lately, just as Major League Baseball is…

The last thing I remember, I was running the numbers as I dashed from some nondescript Midtown hotel. How many blocks to Penn Station? February 28th. COVID-19 was beginning to wreck havoc on my global travel plans. The Big Apple was feeling increasingly over populated. The quickest route straight away: Do Not Pass Go, Do…

It was always all about the coda. First, the acoustic. Then, DJ Latenight’s studio magic: white noise, blips and beeps, digital stardust. Next, Mike Butterworth’s electric. Then his voice, haunted, distant “Ooohs.” The riff crescendos, repeating the same squealing high note for two full measures, a bright, binary ghost shimmering amidst strange, swirling currencies. Meanwhile,…

108 years ago next week, Henry Houdini premiered his “Great Escape.” The famed magician was handcuffed and shackled, then nailed into a crate which was roped and weighed down with two hundred pounds of lead. The crate was then lowered into the East River from a tug; police had forbade him to use a local…

There are magical moments every morning these days. This is one. The girls are seated and still (for now) in their makeshift classrooms: plastic folding tables and antique chairs salvaged from the basement. They’re tapping away at their Chromebooks. Elsie is smiling through the blank spot filled, until yesterday, with her canine. All is silent,…