Point of View
Fat Cat Christmas
My Gimme List was driven solely by my desire to be one of the guys and included just one item, the toy demanded by every other boy in my third-grade class: a Fat Cat. READ MORE
Articles by Keith Howard
Point of View
Tragedy, Comedy, Farce–Christmas!
That may be my happiest Christmas memory, that walk with Kelly Boucher, six months after she’d dumped me, ending in the chastest fashion imaginable. READ MORE
Point of View
How Not to Create a Christmas Tradition
We used to put electric candles in our windows to guide the Christ child, or that was how my mother told it. Why, exactly, a newborn infant needed guiding—or what he was doing in Durham, New Hampshire, in December, was never explained. It was a tradition.
Point of View
Always More Solutions than Problems: George Needs a Job
I’d like to help George find a job before Christmas. He’s hard-working as hell, smart as hell, talented as hell, honest as hell and, despite his lunacy, a great employee. He started off as a volunteer at Liberty House, soon spending so much time that I couldn’t help but create a paid position for him. READ MORE
Point of View
The Execution of Chatty Cathy
Once upon a time, long, long ago, before television cost money or people held little boxes to talk into on the street, there lived a boy and a girl. The boy was very, very good and the girl was okay most of the time, except when she was cranky, which was quite often, but that’s not really part of the story. READ MORE
Point of View
Never Poor but Plenty Broke
That kind of informal tax on poverty wears a man down over time, and can transform him from being broke but not poor to just a plain old poor man. Every man has his breaking point in the battle between poverty and self-respect. I didn’t reach mine, but that’s not because I’m better or smarter or more deserving than the broke and poor folks who came to Liberty House. READ MORE
Point of View
A 5-star review of a homeless shelter
Yesterday, I had breakfast in Manchester with a friend who’s fallen on hard times through no real fault of her own, unless developing a life-threatening disease and falling for the wrong man — or the right man at the wrong time —can be tallied in the fault column. Eleanor, not her real name, has been living at New Horizons Homeless Shelter for the past three weeks. READ MORE
Point of View
My Third Favorite Holiday! – watching Army beat Navy on Saturday!
My friends J.P. Marzullo and Jeff Chidester, political gadflies both, are neither Native American nor, as you might guess from J.P.’s last name, Englishmen who came over on the Mayflower. JP and Jeff had nothing to do READ MORE
Point of View
Words, Words, Words: A Brief Sketch of Sally Piper, a Woman I Never Knew
One pregnancy resulted in the live birth of a girl, released for adoption immediately, in June, 1962. One pregnancy resulted in a stillborn girl in March, 1961. One pregnancy resulted in the live birth of a boy, released for adoption immediately, in November, 1958. That last baby boy was me. READ MORE
Point of View
Proving Television Wrong
If this were television, call it Leave It to Keith, the writers would recognize they’d written themselves into a corner and either write me out of the show (military school, perhaps?) or ignore the boy they’d created and return my character to its earlier innocence. READ MORE
