Down with Bowne (The Uncut Version)

I discuss the need for simplicity and frugality when considering buying a house. This was first published in The Philadelphia Inquirer many years ago, but the message, I hope, is needed now more than ever. 

Walter Bowne talks about ambition. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgyW0XH0bOs

A three week pilgrimage to England with Dr. Wolfe from Rowan University is the backdrop to this short tale about finding my calling as a writer and as a teacher. Let us all follow our passions. 

Perhaps I needed to heed more the commandments of Walt Whitman.

In a world still so divided, perhaps we all do.

First published in The Philadelphia Inquirer. 

So many of us have lost the art of the chat. In my part of Jersey, coffee addicts whiz in and out of convenience stores, checking the time on Blackberries. We even scan our own groceries. But it wouldn’t be morning in Elmer without coffee and neighborly parlance with the charming, country counter girl. It wouldn’t be morning in America either. First published in Philadelphia Stories. 

Selecting pansies at a local nursery in Southern New Jersey with my young daughters was the last place I expected to confront an unfulfilled sexual fantasy. It was early spring, a warm Saturday, a day for our perennial optimism about the future, but today it was all about the past.

Marcel Proust had his madeleine cake. I found this picture, and then suddenly I'm in Inverness, Scotland as a student, and the past becomes the present, and what was forgotten is summoned back, and out rolls a brand new story . . . and quite bittersweet.

First published in The Phildadelphia Inquirer, this essay explores the glory of a mere 1,200 steps in the morning, and what we can learn from walking. 

Walter Bowne learns an important lesson about being generous and charming from a 2nd grade boy while on a Cape May Whale Watching trip. It makes him remember the many mistakes he made when he was young in regards to romance. 

What happens when a father confonts his daughters about saying goodbye to all the stuffed animals.