• One Thing or Another Column,  One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another Column: That Relaxed Fit Time of Life

    August 4, 2025 /

    Narration provided by Wondervox

    By Mark McNease

    I never did buy the bicycle I mention in this, and it’s just as well. I’m sure it would have gathered dust in the garage. I walk as often as the mood hits me, but I haven’t glided down the road on a two-wheeler in a decade or so. I’m still in a relaxed-fit stage of life, perhaps more so five years later, and it feels increasingly as if I’m exactly where I ought to be.

    It hit me recently when I was out looking for a new bicycle. I told the young man working at the store that I was mostly concerned with comfort. I’m not trying out for the Tour de France, and I don’t imagine myself riding in that event, unlike many of the people I see zipping around the New Jersey countryside with brand names on their backs and Spandex hugging them more tightly than a human ought to be hugged. I’m just a guy who lives in the woods and wants to get my heart rate up a few times a week by circling the back roads of my rural community.

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  • A House in the Woods 2 Audio,  NEW

    A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due – Chapter 6 (Audio)

    July 29, 2025 /

    CHAPTER 6

    Welcome to the episodic audio edition of A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due. Fasten your headphones and enjoy one new chapter each week. You can  find all the episodes here.

    About A House in the Woods 2

    A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due picks up where A House in the Woods left off. Laurel Calloway is still in the mysterious town of Strickland, New Jersey, where nothing is as it appears to be. Two years have gone by, and they’ve been good to the Calloways. Laurel and her husband Jeremy have a new house, and a new family with baby Isabel about to celebrate her first birthday. Everything seems perfect, until Laurel begins to have dreams. Bad dreams. Something tells her these dreams could really be memories. But of what? Of whom, and of when?

    Did she really run over a woman in the road at night? Had they once had a dog? Why are these things trying so hard to surface, swimming slowly up from her subconscious? The more she begins to tell the people around her about these dreams, the more convinced she is that they’re part of it, and that these nightmares aren’t really dreams at all. Page after page, the pace escalates as Laurel begins to learn the truth and plot her escape. But will she succeed? The Devil is in the details.

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  • NEW,  The Twist Podcast

    The Twist Podcast #300: Fireworks, Jumbotrons, Birthday Wishes, Zachary James Interview and So Much More

    July 27, 2025 /

    Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose as we throw a studio party for our 300th episode. We started The Twist in 2018 and we’re as irreverent as ever. They’ll never paint over our rainbow lives or our sparkly podcast, as we enjoy a PBS review  from Emma, Rick’s interview with Zachary James, and an up-and-personal chat with Jo Klett, whose wisdom and humor offer a balm for these chaotic times.

    This Week’s Survey Results

    If you could master one thing instantly what would it be?

    Playing an instrument  65 percent
    Speaking multiple languages  47.06
    Cooking like a super chef   5.88
    Painting or drawing  23.53
    Other – what would it be? 5.88

    COMMENTS:

    • Any and all! I always dreamed of being able to speak and understand whatever language of the country i was visiting, instantly and without study. That would be my superpower!
    • Spanish and French so I can speak with my friends in Europe in their language
    • Piano
    • spanish, Portuguese
    • understanding and predicting stock market fluctuations
    • Ukulele
    • Spanish and/or Portuguese, since we might end up moving to a place where that’s the primary language.
    • Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic. Not French tho- I already speak the language of love bahahahahahaha!
    • Singing
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  • One Thing or Another Column

    One Thing or Another Column: Comparatively Speaking

    July 14, 2025 /

    Narration provided by Wondervox

    By Mark McNease

    “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Five years after writing this, it’s still true that so many of the conversations I have with friends and peers is about comparing—not so much to one-up each other with our aches, pains, and fears about our future health issues, but to simply share these things we have in common. Perhaps ‘age is just a number,’ as the platitude insists, but the body has a different opinion.

    What is it about aging that has so many of us comparing aches and pains, as if we’re war veterans comforted by knowing we’re not the only ones wounded? Life can feel like combat when you’ve survived enough of it, and maybe the time simply comes when the scars we show each other are the result of putting so many decades behind us.

    I remember hearing people my age talk about knee stiffness, back pain, inflamed joints, and the malaise that comes from knowing you won’t die young. “It’s better than the alternative,” we say, assuming the alternative is a cemetery plot or an urn from the local crematorium. We console ourselves with having outlasted and outlived so much, but the body knows better the prices we pay. Friends long gone. Parents a memory that somehow becomes more cherished with the erosion of time. The increasing effort needed to get into a car, climb a staircase, and some days just get out of bed.

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