by James Michael Starr | Jun 16, 2022 | Uncategorized
Above: The collage of butterfly wings on my mother’s photo that launched my personal mythology. M Y MOTHER, the 44-year-old woman I sat next to on the couch that day in 1973, had finally left her troubled past behind. My mob-connected step-father, who in 1962...
by James Michael Starr | Jun 16, 2022 | Uncategorized
Above: The letter my mother wrote me soon after we were reconciled in 1973. O NCE I SAW MY MOTHER AGAIN—face-to-face for the first time since I was eleven—I was married and 23. And there I sat, on her couch in Cleveland, Ohio, as she tried to explain why she left us...
by James Michael Starr | Feb 15, 2022 | Uncategorized
Above: Is it just me, or is there something weird going on in this picture? Y ES, I’M A STORYTELLER. I can’t help but make things up. I’ve been told I may even have a tendency to look at a family snapshot such as this and try to extract more meaning than is actually...
by James Michael Starr | Feb 15, 2022 | Uncategorized
Above: Who could blame her for wanting to flee the kind of place called “hell with the lid off”? W HEN I WAS THIRTY-SEVEN, my first marriage floundered, then ran aground. And like others who’ve been shipwrecked that way, I found myself confronted by...
by James Michael Starr | Feb 10, 2022 | Uncategorized
Above: “Children in Midland, Pennsylvania” (1940) by Jack Delano. Library of Congress M Y MOTHER WAS TEN YEARS OLD in the winter of 1940 when photographer Jack Delano came to town. Employed by the Farm Security Administration component of FDR’s WPA,...
