Circumnavigating the Medulla Oblongata A note concerning the basic attitude of this book of stories. The story-telling of a stained-glass window. The minutae of a moment recorded through a fly's eye. The strange tales and weird memos of a modern-day Moses. All these are closer to the spirit of the stories in this collection than the usual DOs and DON'Ts of the narrative art. There's a freedom of freak-dom in being a miniaturist of the psyche, a landscape artist with the pallatte of a portrait painter. Rules are more like napkin sketches of escape plans to cross some foreign border at night, the rain tumbling against the passenger train's oblong panes, the moon no more than a rumor. Gregg Glory January, 2014