Because there has to be a cat page, doesn't there?
When | Where | My Mews | Major Works |
1954-1972 Cushing Road, |
2854 Cushing Road as it appeared in 1993. That's structural brick, not a facade. When we lived there, the yard was grass, and there was a pair of two-story-tall spruce trees flanking the walk at the stoop. The bay window is another late addition. I don't think any of the kids realized just how small the house was, because most everyone we knew lived the same way. Still, we shared our parents' dream of someday moving to something called a "subdivision," and the back yard of Aunt Judy's house in Merchantville (an older 4-on-4) seemed remarkably vast. The dream was never realized, but after I left for college, my parents moved to the 4-on-4 next door to Judy. |
Spook--my mother's cat.
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A letter to the editor, published in the Camden
Courier-Post. Short stories published in Impressions,
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1972-1974 Armstrong Hall, |
Third floor, fourth set of windows from the left. I roomed with a high school classmate from back in New Jersey--not a best friend, but we got on well enough so that neither of us felt completely alone that far from home. |
Amelia--adopted from someone in the psych department near the end of my freshman year. My R.A. looked the other way until Amy was spotted climbing the window screens of my room. Amelia went home to New Jersey to live, and adopted my younger sister and my father as her buddies. |
Stories for ENG 228A, the only creative writing class I've ever taken. |
1974-1976 Delta Arms Apts., |
Junior year, the lower balcony at center was our room; senior year, the lower balcony at far right. These two years represent the sum total of my experience with living with best friends, and Rick, Art, and Marc are the only college friends I still see and hear from. (Karla was an unofficial fifth roommate by the end of our junior year; she moved in for senior year, and our wedding pictures--both of them--were taken with us on that balcony.) |
No pets allowed. | The Open Face of Heaven (unpublished novel) |
Summer of 1976 Northwind Apts., |
Karla and I lived here for just a couple of months, during which time I worked as a clerk in the photo and electronics departments at Meijer and looked for a teaching job. I eventually found one in Northern Indiana, a week before the first day of school--we packed and moved in record time. |
Charlie--Karla and I adopted him as an adult cat from the Ingham County Humane Society. He was an adrenalin junkie and aerialist--he loved to be tossed on a blanket, or dropped off the Briarwood balcony onto the living room couch. |
Resumes and cover letters. |
Fall of 1976 Susan Street, |
An awful little house. We had hardly |
Charlie | Lesson plans for my science and math students at Heritage Middle School. |
Winter of 1977 South Main Street, |
We rented a former dentists' office across the street from Goshen College. There was one-way glass in the bedroom windows, and fluorescent lighting in the living room. But it was a marked improvement all the same. We would have stayed longer than two months, but when the dentists' new office next door burned down, they claimed it back. It's now a student rental, at $665 a month. |
Charlie | More lesson plans. |
1977-1978 Briarwood Apartments, |
After enduring four moves in ten months, we never fully unpacked during our year in this two-bedroom townhouse apartment. Trivia: Paul Huffman's famous photos of the 1965 Palm Sunday twin-funnel F-4 killer tornado ripping though Midway Trailer Park were taken just a few hundred yards from our front door. |
Charlie slipped out of the house during a snowstorm one day, and we never saw him again. We told ourselves he'd gone over to the farm next door, found a barn full of girl-cats, and decided to stay. |
Still more lesson plans. "Memory" (Asimov's, 9/83) "The Inevitable Conclusion" (Amazing Stories, 8/79 - first sale) "Addressee Unknown" (Amazing Stories, 3/81) |
1978-1986 Sunset Boulevard, |
Despite the glamorous address, this was a modest 1-1/2 story dormered Cape Cod on a one-block-long street off U.S. 33. At first, I worked in the back third of the basement by the stairs; later I got the small ground-floor bedroom for my office--the only office I've ever had with a proper window and a view. I liked this house a lot. It satisfied a lot of that childhood yearning for a house with no shared walls and a yard that went all the way around. But by the time we left Goshen, we were struggling, and the wheels came off completely shortly after we returned to the Lansing area. And all of a sudden I was starting over. |
Amanda--the cat, not the daughter. We adopted her as an older kitten from the Elkhart County Humane Society. I remember that she loved to sit in the pool of afternoon sunlight on my yellow office carpet. Alas, she didn't take well to Lazi's arrival in the household, and started peeing in the sunny spot on my yellow office carpet by way of protest. Nothing we did could persuade her to adapt, and in the end we had to return her to the shelter. I still feel bad about that.
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Matthew Many short stories. Novels Emprise, Enigma, Empery |
1986-1995 Briarcliffe Apartments, |
Over the nine years we lived there, this two-story two-bedroom townhouse went from being nearly empty to incredibly full. The guys from Two Men And A Truck estimated our box count at 1500, and told us we should have gone for four men and two trucks. |
Arro - Gwen's calico tripod, and the haughty grande dame of her household for more than 27 years. They moved in with me in June, 1988, and we finally said good-bye to her in May, 1994. We have many Arro stories, because she was a cat of great character, with both endearing and annoying quirks. Shadow - Gwen
adopted Shadow as a young
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Amanda Alternities Exile Vectors (begun 1992) |
1995- present Meridian Twp. |
A comfortable but unprepossessing three- bedroom 1960s ranch house in the slums of suburban Meridian Township; another basement office, this one with a fake fireplace I use for my aerospace shrine. |
Captain loved the new neighborhood, with voles and the occasional rabbit in our fenced and overgrown back yard. But a mysterious neurological affliction took him from us in July, 2001.
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Gavin Star Wars: Before the Storm Star Wars: Shield of Lies Star Wars: Tyrant's Test Vectors (completed 2001) Fragments (work in progress) |
Return to K-Mac's Base Station.
Last Revised: March 04, 2014