Len Boswell's Blog
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Apr.07.2010
My Aunt Bessie died before she could fulfill her dream, to fly to Paris. But now two news stories have me thinking there may be a way for future Aunt Bessies to fulfill their dreams, even after death.
The first news item was about two German women who tried to smuggle their 91-year-old deceased...
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Apr.06.2010
Some days even the smallest thing can lift my mood. Walking to my Marta station in Atlanta is usually uplifting and energizing, even in the worst weather, but the ride on the train—arguably one of the ugliest subway systems in the world—is always a downer. If you want to find the highest per capita...
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Apr.02.2010
My father was an alarmist, a man who would often overreact when the proper response was to stay calm. I remember a day when I was about ten and the family had gone to one of my father’s favorite fishing spots, Allen’s Fresh, which was usually packed with picnicking families and fishermen every...
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Mar.18.2010
Saturday morning catching crawdads in the creek at the bottom of R Street, lush mushy mud capturing our feet.
That’s what instantly comes to mind when I think of spring. Not flowers, not blossoming trees, not sudden showers or a steadily warming breeze. I am eight years old, up to my knees in the...
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Mar.12.2010
A photograph can be a vivid, often painful, reminder of an embarrassing moment. But what if there is no photograph and the people who witnessed the event still remember it—without visual prompting—decades after the event? Such was the case with my most embarrassing high school moment, which came...
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Mar.04.2010
Every time I hear the Beatles song “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” I am transported back in time to the home where I grew up. I am almost any age, from 6 to 18, and I am always peering out the dormer window of my second-story bedroom, watching Mrs. Kite, who is always old. She’s sitting on her...
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Feb.17.2010
The nice thing about typos is there’s usually someone to blame, someone you can confront in a finger-wagging huff or a full-blown rage, someone who can reluctantly receive your shouted list of synonyms for “idiot,” which rightly includes their name.
Unless, of course, you’re to blame. Ahem.
Then,...
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Feb.01.2010
I have ATM banking down cold, or at least I did until Saturday morning, when I set out to deposit a check and some cash. The bank requires you to fill out a bank deposit slip (from your checkbook) and then put that and the checks and cash into an envelope for insertion into the machine.
So I drove...
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Jan.13.2010
My mother loved her sofa. No, more than that, she revered it. You could tell by the look in her eye and the way she sighed when she looked at it. Revered it to the point that she encased it in clear plastic to protect it from dust and spills and the sweaty young bodies and mud-clogged sneakers of...
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Dec.16.2009
When I was a kid, my mother would drag me to the local TV stations in Washington, DC, hoping that one of us would be selected as a contestant on one of their many game shows, and “win fabulous prizes.” My mother was, in fact, selected many times, which meant the bus ride back home involved lugging...
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Dec.16.2009
As Santas go, it was A-Number-One, at least in the eyes of my father, as he stood there in the woman’s yard, snow falling gently on what had to be the last yard sale of the year. Sure it was missing one of its plastic legs, but many a fat, jolly old elf has gotten along just fine with just one leg...
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Dec.15.2009
Describe yellow without resorting to a description of wave lengths or to nouns that are themselves yellow, e.g., “the color of a banana.”
That's the challenge a friend gave me recently. Frankly, I'm not very good at such things. But whenever I’m given a tough assignment like this one, I always...
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Dec.14.2009
[As the opening credits roll, the camera, at ground level, follows a man walking quickly but deliberately down a city sidewalk. We see only his shoes—black Italian loafers, probably Lorenzo Banfi’s—for six, seven, eight steps, then the camera slowly begins to pan upwards. We see the trousers of a...
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Dec.11.2009
Sometimes, history gets it wrong. Terribly wrong. Such is the case with the origin of Gargoyles, those fanciful, grotesque sculptures carved in gray stone that began appearing on the cathedrals of Europe in the 1200s. Sculptures, that is, with a job: to transport rainwater far away from the...
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Dec.10.2009
Sometimes, if you’re trying to track down the origin of a certain thing, person, or being, it’s best to go directly to the original source. That is certainly true for leprechauns. Absent rainbows, of course, they’re difficult to find, and once found can only be trapped by a fixed stare. Blink and...
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About Len
Born in a hospital that has since been torn down, grew up on a street that has since changed its name, in a house that has since changed its number. Everywhere around me my life seems to be erasing itself. Before the eraser finishes its work, however, I spend...