It is not lost on me that the day my family committed, on paper, to live in America until 2052, 19 children were gunned down in their elementary school. That is what 5/24/22, a date we wrote over and over,…
2022’s COVID Capitulation: The Crisis of Individual Response to Collective Problems
The US has given up trying to fight COVID. Buoyed by the still somewhat speculative notion that the Omicron variant is so weak as to pose a substantially reduced threat, exhausted by nearly two years of half-hearted and poorly-implemented attempts…
SEPTA September
I have a new job, and have for the last forty days, helping faculty in Drexel’s School of Public Health write and submit their grants, keep their grant budgets straight, report on their research when it’s over. It’s rewarding and…
Game 162, 2021
The Seattle Mariners are three years older than I am. I’m older than anyone on their roster by four years, but most of the team is much younger. Their manager, Scott Servais, was in Little League when two new franchises,…
Upstreet Publishes “The Thirteen Mythological Ways I Almost Died”
This week, the award-winning print literary journal upstreet published my list essay “The Thirteen Mythological Ways I Almost Died.” The essay strings together dangerous and frequently retold moments from my life, from near-death experiences in infancy to my suicide attempts…
Facebook, Creative Nonfiction, and the Demise of Blogging
Long time, no see. At least here. If you’d told me that I would have a child and it would be almost three months before any mention of it appeared on this website, I would have thought you were bonkers.…
Coronavirus and the Limits of Utilitarianism
The public debate around American society’s response to the novel coronavirus is beginning to reach an incomprehensible crescendo. As the number of cases in the US spikes to record-highs and daily deaths begin to creep back up toward levels not…
Lunch Ticket Publishes “Ambiguity”
Lunch Ticket, the literary and art journal from the MFA community at Antioch University Los Angeles, just published Storey’s essay “Ambiguity” in their new Summer/Fall 2020 issue. This is an exploration of his life with gender, through a chronological series…
Unemployment Revisited: Real Unemployment Over 20%
It’s been a while. With the cascading rush of the Trump years toward an alleged full employment in the wake of the 2016 election seeming to reflect a widespread acknowledgment that officially reported unemployment was failing to capture the full…
Defund. Dismantle. Reinvest.
I’ve made a series of graphics to advocate steps that American cities and society writ large can take to shift their priorities from violence and racism toward something more collaborative and positive. Here’s an example: If you would like to…