to elena, who dumped me
After they divorced, T.S. Eliot’s first wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood would occasionally show up at his lectures or poetry readings carrying a sign that said “I Am the Wife He Abandoned.” Review of The Complete Prose […]
Author: Con Chapman
I'm a Boston-area writer, author of The Year of the Gerbil, a history of the 1978 Red Sox-Yankees pennant race, and 50 books of humor including "Scooter & Skipper Blow Things Up!" by HumorOutcasts Press. My work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Christian Science Monitor and The Boston Globe among print outlets. "Rabbit's Blues," my biography of Johnny Hodges, Duke Ellington's long-time alto sax player, will be published by Oxford University Press in September.
As Folk Music Returns to Roots, Some Try to Bury Them
ACTON, Mass. It’s Folk Music Night at The Den of Antiquity, a coffeehouse in the basement of an Episcopal Church here that serves as a meeting place for those whose tastes are offended by the […]
As New Year Nears, Young Scientists Baffled by Lack of Dates
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts. When New Year’s Eve was still a month away, Massachusetts Institute of Technology sophomore Jeremy Klotkin took steps to make sure he didn’t spend the night when many unattached men hope to “get […]
Ask Mr. Postal Service Person
Everybody loves the daily walk down to the mailbox this time of the year, when it’s chock full of greeting cards and catalogs that cause Mr. Postal Service severe back pain and make him just a […]
As Helicopter Kids Grow Up, “Bring Your Parents to Work Day” Spreads
NEW YORK. Safra Cohen is a lowly first-year associate at a corporate law firm with offices in mid-town Manhattan who has spent her first three months on the job as the junior member of a […]
How Did You Two Meet?
Many couples have cute stories to tell about how they met, which they are happy to recount at nauseating length. For others, however, the circumstances of a first romantic encounter were regrettable, causing embarrassment whenever […]
For One Business, Black Friday is Grimmer Than for Others
FRAMINGHAM, Mass. This town of 68,000 in the suburbs west of Boston is home to Shopper’s World, the nation’s oldest shopping center. Once Thanksgiving dishes are done and locals have woken from tryptophan-induced slumbers, it […]
The Old Curmudgeon Has a Lesbian Thanksgiving
It’s the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the only people you see coming into work in Boston are those who either have to be here–like me–or guys like my partner the Old Curmudgeon, whose wife can’t stand to […]
Kanye Explodes as Biden Nominates Fed Chair for Second Term
WASHINGTON, D.C. President Biden said Monday he would nominate Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to a second term, hoping that continuity in the central bank’s leadership would calm inflation fears, but the announcement left one […]
Writer Taken Off Life Support Waiting for New Yorker Reply
CHILLICOTHE, Ohio. A state court today granted a woman’s request to take her husband off life-support against the terms of his health care proxy, which stipulated that he should be kept alive until he heard […]