We should never do special issues—that was one of Ray’s warnings when we launched The Independent last August. Ray is our marketing director. We worked together at the Free Times, where he was their marketing guy, too. Special issues, like “Best Of’s” and “Back to Campus” editions, are ridiculous undertakings for small publications. It [...]
New Stories by Local Authors! Trail of Blood, By Lisa Black 867-5309: A Love Song, By David Giffels The Properly Accessorized Kitchen, By Erin O’Brien An Excerpt from Under Glass, By Jen Hirt THE CRACK, By Scott Lax An Excerpt from Tales From the Road, By Neil Zurcher Untitled, By Judith Monsour Spring [...]
By Erin O’Brien I select every kitchen gadget and accessory based not only on its technical specifications, but also on its physical appearance and my emotional connection to it. For instance, my lobster claw crackers are fire engine red and shaped like lobster claws, thereby making the instructions for use inherent in the design—a [...]
The Girl With a Thousand Christmas Trees by Jen Hirt Introduction: Glass Always Breaks On my 30th birthday, I had the blueprint of a greenhouse tattooed on my left bicep. Young men loitering in the tattoo parlor wondered what the straight lines and strong angles of beams were all about. I explained: the blueprint [...]
By Scott Lax The slate patio built in May by the recently indicted contractor is cracked on this hazy mid-July morning. A fracture winds through it like a dried-up Amazon River, looking to Jeremy as if Cleveland is about to swallow up what’s left of the near west side: its desanctified churches and abandoned [...]
Memoirs by the Longtime Host of TV’s “One Tank Trips” By Neil Zurcher Freelancing for WJW-TV while reporting full-time for WEOL, I joined Walt Glendenning and Ray Goll, another photographer friend who lived in Vermilion and was a freelance photographer for Channel 3, as unofficial photographers for the Lorain County Sheriff’s Department, which did [...]
Dorothy Parker said, “Writers are always selling someone out.” I agree. I eavesdrop on your conversations; I’m a voyeur in your living room; a spectator in your tragedies, all to garner material for my work. This pisses people off. It leads to a fairly singular existence. Not sharing me, only absorbing you. But that’s [...]
Always just outside corners of sight, in spring, when girls’ arms, hibernating in parkas and under sweaters blossom. On the court at the playground, I pummeled the asphalt, arced the ball to master absence, to make the strings of the orange ring sing their slow tearing. [...]
Dear Lebron, Please stay. I sit in Section 106, Row 8, Seat 6. During Game 2 of the Chicago series, I saw you catch your own pass. I’m just one of the thousands of people who wake up to a front page photo of you doing something statistically impossible. I love what you [...]
By Susan Grimm A dog barks down the beach, but I only recall that later—the sequence of noises and shapes. Barking as if the chain is distended, the dog strains against the restraint. Waiting for the sun, I am wrapped up well with my two chairs angled, with socks and a jacket [...]
