The Pressure Cooker
The Pressure Cooker
When Captain Leff arrived at Udorn Royal Thai Air Base in the summer of 1969, one may have…
Author
Bombs Away
Bombs Away
Fred Branfman emerged from the jungles of Laos carrying a heavy load. He wasn’t weighed down with…
Healthcare’s Invisible Glue
Healthcare's Invisible Glue
I once had the opportunity of developing intimate relationships with people of all…
Islam Peace Prison
Islam Peace Prison
Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, while talking on Meet the Press about President…
Ashita (Tomorrow)
Toward the end of my academic studies I began to obediently panic about my future
Take it Like a Man
Take it Like a Man
“Be strong.” “Bear up to pain.” “Be sexually potent.” “Provide for others.” “Endure.” “Don’t…
Hazel Johnson – Environmental Shero
It started with her husband. Hazel Johnson’s sweetheart of seventeen years died an early death from lung cancer.
Where Did Our Sex Life Go?
Our Sex Life
When your newborn is literally sucking the energy from you twenty-four hours a day, will the energy…
Choosing To See Color
Choosing To See Color
I grew up in the segregated North, in Redding California. Redding was mostly a lumber mill…
Lives and Losses of our Children
Lives and Losses of our Children
Adults can be just as scared of death as children and are often unsure what to…
Adoption: It’s About Time!
There are thousands of children, of all ages, waiting for adoption in the U.S.
Screaming Silence
There was screaming, crunching, steel on steel, cracking concrete, electric sparks and explosions
Child of the Holocaust
Auschwitz. The word is synonymous with death, loss, murder and extermination, the worst barbarism that can be…
Money And Sex Can’t Buy It
Money And Sex Can't Buy It
Nothing spices up a relationship like romance. Whether you’ve been together ten…
Mind Full Of Sex
Mind Full Of Sex
“Sex, sex, sex.” My wife grinned at me with a bemused expression of wonderment. “You have a…
Almost Pregnant and Almost Vegan
I’m “almost” vegan, is like saying I’m a “little” pregnant, but there is a complex history to this...
The Round House
I usually only review books for The New York Journal of Books and tend to not make the effort to share what I am…
From Story To Script To Screen
From Story To Script To Screen
The story, as seen at this time. So close and yet so far and so far and yet so…
Every Instinct
From Saint Catherine’s Baby – Stories.
A warm breeze squeezed through the holes in the window screen of the small…
Don’t Die!
I fell in love with Robin the first day we met. She was playing her role, as a recently admitted hospice patient,…
A Rwandan Folk Tale
A Rwandan Folk Tale
At one time, all of the children in this book lived on the streets of Kigali, the capital of…
Come Back Harvey
Come Back Harvey
The ally was the surest way to get from here to there. I made my break out the screened back door…
A Bold Love
A Bold Love: My sister Joanne had come, for respite, from our hometown of Modesto, a land-locked metropolis…
The Nicholas Green Story
The Nicholas Green Story: Excerpt from Don’t Just Sit There, Do Something! - Grief’s Wake Up Call by Gabriel…
Land Minds
Saint Catherine’s Baby – Stories (Excerpt) by Gabriel Constans
He was savagely independent, having lived in the…
Le Ly Hayslip’s Ancestors
Excerpt from Don’t Just Sit There, Do Something! Grief’s Wake Up Call. Conversations with Gabriel Constans.As a…
Hiranya’s Tongue
Saint Catherine’s Baby – Stories - Excerpt
“I was pregnant with words from the day of my birth. They seep through…
Get Over It!
From Good Grief: Love, Loss and Laughter (Excerpt)
“What are you so upset about? It was only your ex-husband.”…
Moving Up in Life
From Saint Catherine’s Baby – Stories (Excerpt)
If you enjoy stench, spilled guts and sights too horrible to…
Gato and Gakuru
Excerpt from The Skin of Lions: Rwandan Folk Tales (as told by the children at ROP Center for Street Children.
By…
Dressed In Black
Excerpt from Saint Catherine’s Baby – Stories.
Stephanie came every day. She came without presumptions, ulterior…
A Literary Seduction
A Literary Seduction
Catching sight of it across the room,
pushing desks and chairs aside, I circled the…
Dying to Read About Death?
Read About Death
How much information about dying, death, and grief can we handle?
Jackie told me that after…
Novel Excerpt: Buddha’s Wife
Excerpt from novel Buddha’s Wife. Told in the first person by Yasodhara who has left the order and is dying.…
Courage Inside the Walls
Went to maximum security prison yesterday for the weekly group. Only there for about 3 hours, but time seemed…
Luscious Chocolate
Luscious Chocolate
The chocolate industry is an $8 billion-a-year business. The United States is the world’s…
Review: Traveling With Pomegranates
A mother and daughter travel to Greece, Turkey, France and home to South Carolina and provide their respective…
His Mother’s Arms
The squeaking bicycle wheels turned with mechanical persistence, as Jon pumped triumphantly across the neighborhood…
Watch Your Ass and Testify
Excerpt from Paging Dr. Leff: Pride, Patriotism & Protest.
In the midst of his conflicts on base, Dr. Leff…
Falling On High
“Tony! I need the hammer!” - “What?!” Tony yelled back, as he poured another bucket of hot tar on the smoldering…
A Good Book
A Good Book
“Hurry up Sy! We’ll be late, Ruthie hollered from the hallway, as she threw on her wool coat.
The…
The Only Alternative
Martin Luther King Jr., said, “Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness.
Something Smells Foul
Excerpt from Paging Dr. Leff: Pride, Patriotism & Protest.
In late 1969 and early 1970, Udorn Royal Thai Air…
As Precious As Gold
The drought had lasted many moons. Life’s energy on earth was slipping away. Mammals, reptiles and fish had…
The English Lesson
They stopped at 410 Stadler. Sy kept the gas guzzling, early eighties Plymouth idling, as Ruthie got her folder…
The Color of Fear
The Color of Fear: “Your mother’s been murdered!” The woman who gave you birth and taught you the meaning of love,…
My Son Ryan and AIDS
In 1984, one week before Christmas, Jeanne White was told that her son Ryan had contracted AIDS from a blood…
Good Neighbors In Rwanda
If there hadn’t been a gigantic sign on the street saying “C.E.L.P.A.R. Polyclinique”, the house within which it…
Women On Front Lines
Women are offering their personal resources, time and energy like never before. At least 59 percent of those…
When Animal Friends Die
They say cats have nine lives. I wish that were true, but the facts contradict such myths. Everything dies,…
Finding Peace In Hell – The Life of Nicola Geiger
The Life of Nicola Geiger
Events that can and often do, devastate us emotionally, can also be used for personal…
A Cure For Susie
A Cure For Susie
Susan G. Komen was married, with two small children, when she was given a diagnosis of…
Leah And Yitzhak Rabin: Dying For Peace
Leah And Yitzhak Rabin
November fourth, 1995, was an international day of mourning.
After completing a speech…
Close to the Bone
Close to the Bone
“Let them go.” “Get over it.” “Move on.” “Pull yourself together.” “Quit living in the past.”…
Birthday In Rwanda
Birthday In Rwanda
Volunteering for three weeks with a medical team and trauma specialists to provide care to…
Taking Feminism To Bed
Taking Feminism To Bed
Until I read Bell Hooks books on feminism and love – Communion: The female search for…
Afraid Of Fear
Afraid Of Fear
Even though anxiety, fear, and apprehension are a reality most Americans live with, in varying…
Laughing At Death
Laughing At Death
A famous comedian once said that “Life is a sexually transmitted terminal disease.” And as far…
The Best Ingredient Of All
The Best Ingredient Of All
One mother, two mothers, three mothers or four – we can never have enough love…
The Last Thing On My Mind
The Last Thing On My Mind
“My friends keep telling me I have to ‘get out more’ and meet somebody new,” Jan…
Cheapest Trip Ever!
Cheapest Trip Ever
It was on a gorgeous afternoon that I sat at an outside table of a local downtown coffee…
The Mad Woman Who Changed America
The Mad Woman Who Changed America
On May 3rd, 1980, Candace Lightner’s thirteen-year-old daughter Cari was hit…
Queer Gals for Straight Guys
Queer Gals for Straight Guys
Wake up my testosterone engorged brothers. Our estrogen-dominant queer sisters have…
Are You Dead When You’re Dead?
Are You Dead When You’re Dead?
How we feel, believe, or think about what happens to us after we die matters. It…
Love, Lust, and Pheromones
Pheromones
Some folks search for love all their lives and never find it. Some run into it in their teens and…
My Mother’s Son
My Mother's Son
After spending a week together, I discovered that my Mama-San, as I used to call her when I was…
How Old Are You?
How Old Are You?
It happened right before my eyes and I didn’t see it. How could I have missed it? How could I…
Baby Wreaks Havoc
Baby Wreaks Havoc
Having a newborn wreaks havoc on two aspects of daily life I used to take for granted sex and…
Oprah Show Hits Home
Oprah Show
The promo for the story that was on Oprah recently reads, “In an instant, a car accident shattered…