Category Archives: Sports

WIN AT ANY COST by Peter Nolan Smith

In 1968 the Baltimore Colts entered Super Bowl III as 18-point favorites over the New York Jets. The NFL champions were led by Earl Morrall in place of Johnny Unitas, while the AFL underdogs were quarterbacked by the flashy Joe Namath and the Alabama native boasted in Miami, “We’re gonna win the game. I guarantee […]

The Cost of Morality

In 1977 a Beacon Hill lawyer hired me to vanish his gas-guzzling Oldsmobile. $300 to never seen the Detroit pig again. It was grand-theft auto, but the risk was minimal. He’d report the car stolen the next day and collect on the insurance within a month. I had disappeared three of his friend’s lemons during […]

Boycott FIFA World Cup – Qatar

The Qatar peninsula has been populated for thousands of years. In the 1800s the peninsula provided pearls to the Ottoman Empire and later became a British Protectorate. The sleepy Gulf city gained importance with the discovery of oil and natural gas. Its economy swelled with the worldwide demand for fossil fuels and enriched the ruling […]

TWO SECONDS LEFT WITH THE BALL IN MY HANDS by Peter Nolan Smith

Every high tide deposited beer bottles, oil containers, fishing lines, shiny candy wrappers, and plastic bags onto the sloping shoreline of Jomtien Beach. At low tide I harvested the trash into sea-worn rice bags. Within a half-hour the sand was devoid of any human refuse and I smugly regarded the pristine strand with pride. While […]

Pocket Radio

The following day my father brought home two crystal radio sets shaped as rockets. They were made in Japan. My father was an electrical engineer with New England Bell and explained their workings, “You attached alligator clips to a metal object. The signal is transmitted to the antenna and you tuned the radio with a […]