Soma By Ralph Maltese One of the courses I taught in high school was Radio and Television, an elective designed for students to understand what goes into creating shows.  A unit on media literacy, how to read commercials, for example, was a popular project.  We explored tactics advertisers used to sell a variety of wares (celebrity testimonies, join the crowd, statistical...

               Specimens Are Us                                        By Ralph Maltese The names in this story have been changed to protect the innocent….and the guilty. I was diagnosed with high cholesterol since forever.  My family had a history of...

The Most Wonderfullest Christmas Ever I have celebrated and enjoyed many Christmases over my three score and ten plus years.  Some of the very best involved watching my children dash down the stairs to see what Santa had placed beneath the tree.  Another favorite occurred a few days before Christmas when Polley flew out from St. Louis to spend time with me and my family before she...

Random Acts of Kindness I was teaching high school language arts in a suburban district which was traumatized by a series of events related only by the depth of their debilitating effects on the community.  One of the mishaps included the death of a student.  Things were not going well in our country either. On a dark, dank, February morning, my fourth period Honors class, a truly...

Home is Not a Place Polley and I took stock of all the “must do’s” we have done in recent months and decided it was time to pursue the “want to’s.”  It was her idea to spend a few days in the Adirondack Mountains, my Bronx home away from home, my sanctuary from the unstable vicissitudes of urban elementary school cultures. My father would drive the family from the congested three room Bronx...