A short story by Kenneth T. Zemsky: An old man befriends a peculiar little girl, who teaches him that in times of distress miracles happen.

I. I have always believed in angels. The universe is so vast, and God must be incredibly busy. So I figure He deputizes the angels to help spread goodness across the world. That is probably why Christmas resonates so deeply within me. I can’t get enough of it. Where else and when else can you see a plethora of angels on daily display? The stores and TV stations beginning the holiday blitz right after Halloween provide welcome balm. If anything, I bemoan the fact that in our f

On the first day of my Christmas gift to you… Brett remembered with total clarity the moment the world came to an end. It was when that damn government man visited his house. Ironically, Brett was not even there at the time. Not so ironically, as it turned out, was the fact that Brett’s wife never called him with the news. Actually, Brett did not learn of his world’s demise until about eight hours after the fact. He had just walked in the door of their center hall colonial

Preface I hope, dear reader, that you, along with our protagonist, will find the spirit in this short story of the season with hardly a spirit in sight. I. Introduction Stephanie was in a foul mood, which was her usual mood, when she collided with the stranger. Literally. She had come barreling toward the mall’s exit, arms loaded with gifts, the office having closed early this Christmas Eve, when the sight of a dress in a store window diverted her attention for just a

Much has been written about the crisis in parochial school education, what with declining enrollment, school closures and burgeoning deficits. An equal amount of ink has been dedicated to possible fixes (vouchers, partnerships, charter schools, etc.), none of which has inched toward fruition in large part because the proposed fix is too dramatic (apocalyptic?) a development than the electorate at large is willing to undertake. However a simple, non-burdensome, inexpensive cu

We’ve all had them. That wonderful Bing Crosby-esque local parish priest who inspired us to be more than the sum of our physical parts, and to do so by realizing there was an invisible God-like essence deep within us. That is why as the latest of the seemingly never-ending clerical pedophilia scandals emerges I am, to borrow the phrase from Network, “mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” It may be an infinitesimal number of clerics who perpetrated the abuses, b

One summer during college, in what now seems like the Pleistocene Era, I worked for the Postal Service. This is before the USPS had jeeps, so they were all walking routes. My job was to sub on the regular letter carriers’ days off or on vacations. Not being from the town, I would shadow a letter carrier each day before soloing, so I would know the routes. Before I had shadowed all of the carriers, one of them called in sick. The postmaster told me I would have to handle his

Angels on the hiking trail? Last week my wife and I were in upstate New York enjoying the fall foliage. On one of our morning hikes we passed a trio of women and my wife, being a chatty sort, wished them an enthusiastic “Good morning!” One of the three replied that it was indeed good, what with the beauty the good Lord had surrounded us with. Grace (my wife) explained that we had been making exactly that point, and this led to a robust exchange with the women who, it turn

I love old movies. It’s A Wonderful Life, Going My Way, the Marx Brothers. Old shows, from the golden age of television, also have a certain charm, innocence and entertainment factor that cannot be matched by anything on the tube today. So it was with a thrill of discovery (re-discovery?) that channel surfing rather high on the cable channels I came across a station broadcasting the old fifties to mid-sixties black-and-white game show, To Tell The Truth. This also gave me

[Kenneth Zemsky note: Yes, I'm biased but this is the best baseball article I've read in a long time.] Have you ever noticed the number of major league baseball players with fathers who have also played in the MLB? The laws of statistics tell us that at any given time, only one child of a former major league baseball player should himself make it to the big leagues. However, the actual current crop of MLB offspring is almost 40 times greater than that. Why? Is this statis