Down with Bowne (The Uncut Version)

Composed for Noelle and Andrew on their wedding day: August 10, 1997

A story I wrote in 1989 when I was twenty, traveling across the Big Horn Mountains with my family. It sat alone at the bottom of my drawer until I started to use its basic good structure and frame and imagery and updated for 2021 at 51. I hope you enjoy. 

Only 17 and 20, my brother and I followed the call of the Piper. This is an excerpt from Day 5 of our three-week trip across the country with my mom, my brother, and my sister in 1989. I was 20. Throughout the trip with the pop-up camper, I kept a handwritten journal and typed the journal soon after. The journal is over 200 pages. This excerpt was only moderately edited and updated from the o...

In these uncertain times in education, we have to remember why we’re here. 

In memory of Robin Williams, the man who inspired so many.

A simple boat ride on The Chesapeake Bay reveals more about the divisions in the family than the problems with the boat. A short story by Walter Bowne. First published in Inkwell. Fall 2010. 

Allow James Joyce to take you away from politics and COVID-19. It’s 1904. Welcome to “Ulysses.”

Department of Education   Washington, DC.    Office of the Secretary of Education   The Honorable Betsy DeVos RE: TOOLKIT UPDATE: IMPORTANT MEMO TO SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS! FORM LETTER FOR INEVITABLE TEACHER DEATHS WILL DECREASE YOUR WORKLOAD. Dear School Administrators,  In order to safely reopen schools across the country, a “tool kit” is essential for every...

Dan Norbury and Walter Bowne sat down by a fire outside on Halloween 2020 to talk about what happened back in 1988 during Spring Break in Atsion, New Jersey. 

One late summer afternoon, when I woke from a terrifying COVID-19 dream, I found myself transformed on my couch into the übersexyrockicon Jim Morrison.

What’s makes us remember those from the past? Perhaps they exist in a realm of our own making, not as real people, but in the preserved fantasies and fables that never really go away.

The breezes were lovely during a whale watching adventure in Cape May many years ago, but I was about to observe and understand something very important. Okay, more than just one thing, actually. 

It's more chutes when Walter Bowne tries to negotiate the language in Québec; it's more ladders when it's fun time with the family.  

Walter Bowne talks about three teachers he met two summers ago who were working year-round to pay off high student loan debt. There are lessons here, and it may be good to listen. 

Working from his home studio in the Media Mecca Capital of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Walter Bowne introduces the crazy class of AP Lang and Comp to his rising juniors. Welcome Aboard, scholars. Episode #1

Walter Bowne talks in the car with his 18-year old daughter Nancy Bowne about music. Actually, Nancy talks, and her dad makes idiotic comments. 

So what's so interesting about a compost pile in my local community? Check out my podcast. This was first published in The Courier Post. 2014.  https://www.courierpostonline.com/story/opinion/columnists/2014/09/21/commentary-compost-pile-draws-inner-selves/15998423/

I discuss the need for simplicity and frugality when considering buying a house. This was first published in The Philadelphia Inquirer many years ago, but the message, I hope, is needed now more than ever. 

Walter Bowne talks about ambition.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgyW0XH0bOs

A three week pilgrimage to England with Dr. Wolfe from Rowan University is the backdrop to this short tale about finding my calling as a writer and as a teacher. Let us all follow our passions. 

Perhaps I needed to heed more the commandments of Walt Whitman. In a world still so divided, perhaps we all do. First published in The Philadelphia Inquirer. 

So many of us have lost the art of the chat. In my part of Jersey, coffee addicts whiz in and out of convenience stores, checking the time on Blackberries. We even scan our own groceries. But it wouldn’t be morning in Elmer without coffee and neighborly parlance with the charming, country counter girl. It wouldn’t be morning in America either. First published in Philadelphia Stories. 

Selecting pansies at a local nursery in Southern New Jersey with my young daughters was the last place I expected to confront an unfulfilled sexual fantasy. It was early spring, a warm Saturday, a day for our perennial optimism about the future, but today it was all about the past.

Marcel Proust had his madeleine cake. I found this picture, and then suddenly I'm in Inverness, Scotland as a student, and the past becomes the present, and what was forgotten is summoned back, and out rolls a brand new story . . . and quite bittersweet.

First published in The Phildadelphia Inquirer, this essay explores the glory of a mere 1,200 steps in the morning, and what we can learn from walking.