Fiction, Essays, and Other Things

 It’s been almost a decade since I first hosted Thanksgiving. That summer I had moved into my first house in Revere and I wanted to carry on the tradition that my grandmother had carried on ever since my father came to America in the early 70s. My grandmother, of course, was going to be a guest and I was following her recipe for turkey and, especially, the stuffing…or so I thought.  Thanksgivings at my grandparents’ apartment were always joyous occasions and the very compactness of the quarters were my grandparents lived aided in drawing everyone, my sister and I, my parents, aunts, uncles and cousins, closer.  We drowned out the noise of the Macy’s parade my grandparents would have playing on their rabbit-eared TV and not the other way around. And in true Italian fashion it wasn’t just turkey. A full course of spaghetti and assorted meats in sauce had come and gone by the time the stuffed bird arrived.  And this was no ordinary turkey. My grandmother always bought i...

 In an age of divisiveness nothing should be a surprise as a point of contention. No, not even Bigfoot, and I’m not talking about the head-butting that always surrounded North America’s fabled wild man. Believers have always stood firm while the calls for logic from scientists have been in vain. What has changed is the increased hostility between the two.  This, too, was inevitable for the supernatural is, after all, a religion and few subjects elicit stronger passions, especially when drawn into the political arena, than dogma. Look no further than the quarrel with the church of the flat earth for proof.  Not surprisingly, the quarrel reaches a pitch when Patty enters the room. Patty is the christened name given to the supposed female sasquatch filmed by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin in 1967 in a piece of footage which has since then become the Shroud of Turin for Bigfoot hunters.  Patterson had been such an aficionado since at least 1959 when he began reading abou...