Name: Cotter Interactive
Price range: $

Anyone here seen my X-Acto knife? It was just here a minute ago...

Welcomat memories: The old composition shop

The power and the clutter, or: Once upon a time at the comp shop

The South Philly composition shop where the old weekly Welcomat was pasted together epitomized the dying days of pre-desktop publishing. But it was a bizarre place by any standards.

Derek S.B. Davis

Jul 22, 2012 Essays 7 minute read

Tom Luxâ€” aka the Wrecking Ballâ€” plowed over my lines.

Finding my voice at poetry camp

Suck in that iambic pentameter! Or: Notes from summer poetry boot camp

After years of dabbling in poetry and even after marrying my husband upon hearing his poems, this summer I attended two grueling but exhilarating college poetry workshops. Now I have just one question: Why didn't I do this 30 years ago?

Merilyn Jackson

Jul 17, 2012 Essays 8 minute read

How a teacher makes a difference

One teacher's well-placed words

When she caught me cheating, Miss Rosenthal could have humiliated me. But she found a better way to get the message across.

John L. Erlich

Jul 15, 2012 Essays 2 minute read

Poster for 'Between the Lines,' 1977: The faces looked familiar.

Memories of "The Welcomat'

We called it ‘the 'Mat'

For a brief moment in the '80s— when writers still used typewriters and people still read newspapers— the old weekly Welcomat wreaked havoc with conventional journalistic norms. For an even briefer moment, I enjoyed a front-row seat.

Joy Tomme

Jul 10, 2012 Essays 6 minute read

Mermaid key ring: Is that a bosom I see, or only Asbury Park?

Searching for intelligent life at the shore

A mind is a terrible thing to waste, or: One week in July at the Jersey shore

You're down the shore, with six days to go. How many more miniature golf courses, mermaid key rings, seashell villages and jellyfish in your newspaper before your brain turns to applesauce?

AJ Sabatini

Jul 10, 2012 Essays 5 minute read

On the treadmill: I thought of those who acknowledged the value of rehab but never returned.

Heart attack, Part 7: All the king's horses

The cake also rises: The long road back from heart surgery

If attitude were the determining factor, I told myself, no way would I need more surgery. But no matter how far I'd come, I thought, the world could undo me any moment.

Bob Levin

Jul 03, 2012 Essays 8 minute read

Detail from Eakins's 'Gross Clinic': Turn off that damn cell phone!

Annals of medicine: The Gone-A-Gram

High-tech health care:
Between life and death at a modern hospital

Computerized guidelines for terminating life? Rhesus monkeys programmed to perform surgery? If only patients responded less emotionally and more rationally to the innovations of modern biotechnology, America's health care headaches would vanish overnight.

Joel Chinitz

Jul 03, 2012 Essays 7 minute read

A homophobe in spite of himself?

Sunday in the park with Shaq, or: Getting in touch with my inner homophobe?

Went to a dance/ Lookin' for romance;/ Wound up with a giant dude/ A-sweatin' in his pants. But hey, it's San Francisco.

Robert Liss

Jun 26, 2012 Essays 5 minute read

In his words, an unshakable vision of freedom.

"Churchill and the Power of Words' in NY

He got the biggest thing right

Very few men are suddenly called to greatness. Winston Churchill was one of them, and, though virtually disarmed, he defied history's greatest tyrant with the first and last of all human weapons.