I made my first short film, "Love Conquers All, " in Yellow Springs, Ohio in 2009. My main collaborator was my friend Lee Johnson, who starred in it (and the two subsequent movies we made together). This short is beyond rough around the edges, very clearly a First Film, but I have a fondness for it and for the memories of making it. Everybody in town was really excited and happy to help and give me locations and props and food and stuff. (I even got a $200 mini-grant from the arts council for it!) I was so under the influence of Sam Raimi, and while we were shooting, his movie Drag Me To Hell came out and as a wrap party, me and Lee and rest of the cast got into Lee's van and went to see it. The raucous ruckus we made on the way back was legendary. The original cut was 22 minutes long. The final cut was 15 minutes, so it could get into a short film festival. There were parts I cut that I ended up regretting. Now, all these years later, I dug out the original rough cut an

(My history, that is…) On my 41st birthday (4/22/22), I was staying in Rhode Island. I usually do a birthday hike, but I’m so spoiled by the Western Mass peaks and not that there aren’t any nice hiking trails in Rhode Island because there are, lovely ones, but I figured while I was there, maybe I ought to do something different. I decided that a walk around a real city, which we do lack in Western Mass, would be different. And Providence! My city! And what would make a walk around Providence especially special on my birthday would be revisiting all my old haunts—hence, an historic walking tour. My plan was to walk and stop and take pictures and write and repeat. But I only got a two-hour parking spot, so I didn’t have time to stop and write, only walk and take pictures. The thing about Rhode Island is that I kept leaving and coming back, so my history in Providence is broken up into chunks. childhood: I mostly didn’t grow up in the city proper, so my childhood memories of Providence co

New Year's Eve: Our 3rd annual burning of the Christmas tree. Flames 10, 15, 20 feet high; heat; crackling; kids and adults yelling—it lasts for roughly 2 minutes. We'll do this until the neighbors call the cops on us. New Year's Day: Our 5th annual First Day Hike, this time Mt. Tom in Holyoke, MA. Not quite to the peak of Mt. Tom, but Whiting Peak, 1000 feet. My cameraphone does no justice to the depth and height of this trail. Before the hike, I reflected a bit and wondered why this was only our 5th year doing First Day Hikes, why I hadn't been doing something like this before. For most of my adult life, I've spent New Year's Day too hungover to do much of anything. I did my first (and only) polar plunge on New Year's Day 2016, while hungover. That same year, I moved from RI to MA, which is where I was introduced to the idea of a First Day Hike. 2017: That organized First Day Hike which introduced me to the concept—hosted by the "state park" that