First and foremost, I want to thank all of my new followers.  Your kind words after reading my Freshly Pressed essay, “That Cursed Ruby Box,” meant a lot.  In return, I promise to try my very best to provide consistently great content that inspires you to laugh, cry, run screaming, hide under your bed, take a shot of whiskey, hunt down an old lover and all sorts of things –…

In the family I grew up in, love was often misplaced, nearly always badly botched, but nevertheless there – taking us from day to day.  As a unit, we had every kind of bad luck you can imagine – Nazis, Communists, deaths big and small, petty humiliations and feature film-worthy fiascos.  It’s luck so bad my mom actually calls it a curse.  She believes that curse started…