Photo Source: Unsplash Mornings, Marie awoke to snow or the threat to snow. Like prison walls, white drifts surrounded her tiny wood-slatted house in a small town east of Montreal. Drafty and heated by a Franklin stove, to keep pipes from bursting, she kept a drip going in the porcelain sink. She often wore her threadbare coat even in bed. She survived on the wood and groceries a neighbor brought. Survival, she thought, that’s what The Golden Years had become. She scoffed. Hanging on for...

Stocky with heavy forearms, Frank “hole-in-the-head’s” nickname derived from the thumb-like depression in his forehead, but I never heard anyone but Madge call him that to his face. In Ozone Park most Italians worked in construction, as garbage men, or were mobbed-up. The wad of cash Frank carried said, “Loan shark.” He spoke New York Italian. “Hey, Antonio, che si dice ?” My name’s Anthony. I wore my favorite street wear: a white, sleeveless Italian tee shirt that highlighted my...

Photo Source: Flickr Three weeks in, with the hope of sins forgiven, I hiked, occasionally encountering other pilgrims as we weaved the verdant, wooded, hilly paths of Camino de Santiago. With booted feet and hiking shorts, using a stiff staff for balance on rocky patches, I embraced the penance of aching shoulders caused by my weighty backpack where a Saint James’s attribute scallop shell dangled like a tiny sail speeding my journey. The Way of St. James would be an awfully long way to...