Notes from the Nineties: Stories and Poems - Paperback

by M. Thomas Apple (Author)

A beach in Ireland, a mountain temple in Japan, a hot summer drive in the Bronx, a dentist's office in Michigan, a hospital in San Francisco, and a bus ride through the Hudson Valley. Notes from the Nineties ties these disparate stories together with poems and photos between, with raw emotions: rage, tenderness, vindictiveness, jealousy, terror, sorrow, loss, acceptance. Stories featured in this collection include:

• Cois Fharraige - A group of exchange students in Ireland finding more to do than study language
• Father Knows Least - A college baseball player at home during winter break discovers all is not well with family
• The Firebrand - What happens when you're lost and your car breaks down in New York City?
• Kannuki - Self-disclosure is not necessarily the same as closure
• Boys Will be Boys - Family relations can sometimes be close...too close...
• The Lost Bunny Shrine of Annandale - Come with us into the Enchanted Forest. It's not too dark...
• Pockets - The Dark Lady...what happened after that one party? Only Rose knows...
• Frank - He says he's a liar...speaking frankly...
• The Four Teeth of the Apocrypha - Dentists and the occult should never mix...
• The Green and the Grey - On the bus from Albany, a chance conversation between fellow passengers may be telling...
• Training the Mountain Warrior - I did, actually, dangle my friend off a cliff in Japan. Seriously.

Author Biography

Originally from Troy, New York, M. Thomas Apple spent part of his childhood in a tiny hamlet in the Helderbergs and his teenage years in a slightly larger village in the Adirondacks. He played high school baseball for four years and was a decent base-stealer, adequate outfielder, and terrible batter. Occasionally he dreams of the sole (running) homerun he hit on a 3-0 count, and the subsequent beaning that followed during the next at-bat. He studied languages and literature as an undergraduate student at Bard College and later creative writing at the University of Notre Dame du Lac, where he wrote a controversial, award-winning weekly column for the student-run daily newspaper, The Observer. After further studies in education at Temple University, he now teaches global issues and English as a second language at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan. He lives in a house co-designed with his wife and partially decorated by his two daughters, nestled in the foothills of the mountains and surrounded by lots and lots of Japanese cedar and cicada. A holder of a 4th degree black belt (4-dan) in Shorinji Kempo, he also enjoys hiking and running, as long as his asthma behaves itself.