Ellen McGrath Smith: On Being a Late-Night Motion Detector Detector
Two tiny yellow eyes stared back at me from the shadows near the shed. This has happened with my dog and with my cats, but I had never experienced this with a rat.
Paul Christensen: Winter is Dying
It is a relief just to breathe again without a shudder. The past has been very hard on us, with the terrible vengeance of a disease we can’t control, a government in tatters from the lies and treachery of a tyrant eager to become a New World Putin.
Michael Simms: The Courage of Teachers
In 1987, students gathered in front of the admin building angry over the corruption of the university’s board. The crowd was getting ugly. I was a young teacher standing to the side, listening to the speeches, watching warily as the crowd grew. Someone shouted Take Over the Administration! and the crowd chanted Take Over! Take over! Take Over! The crowd, now a mob…
Valerie Bacharach: Elegy for Nathan
An addict is an actor, able to look you in the eye, smile, and lie so convincingly that you begin to question yourself.
Christine Skarbek: A journey into self or what Auschwitz can do to the soul
I saw the cell where the Jesuit priest Maximilian Kolbe starved to near death as he attended to nine others, all Jews. He was later executed. The space isn’t bigger than my walk-in closet.
Andrew Reginald Hairston: Pandemic Reflections on Money
I did everything right, but I perpetually had very little money.
Paul Christensen: Snow
Ghosts wear snow in the early morning hours and walk around like debutants at a ball. The wind lifts the hems of their long dresses and there is nothing beneath but a few dog tracks. How lonely it must be to be dead.
Ursula K. Le Guin: About Anger
Anger points powerfully to the denial of rights, but the exercise of rights can’t live and thrive on anger. It lives and thrives on the dogged pursuit of justice.
Cecily Sailer & Jim Tuttle: A Tale of Two Karens
They are political polar opposites, but through Braver Angels, they’re forging a path toward productive conversations, and even friendship.
Paul Christensen: The Bluest Sky
He knew the rotting nature of poverty and the dull, disintegrating poison of lost hope. He had some of the dark anger of Walt Whitman, who could charm a winter tree back into bloom with his dreams and turn on his heels and find despair tearing at the entrails of the ordinary man.
Paul Christensen: The Muse of Memory
Nothing stirs but the wind that rattles rain gutters and pulls on the hinges of blistered shutters. A pair of boots has been left out on a patio of gray flagstones, the mud still clinging to their heels like forgotten promises.
Beth Peyton: Writing Prompt # 3 | Rhododendrons and Kangaroos
Pick up three objects from a shelf, or a mantel, or your kitchen counter and describe them in detail. Why did you choose them? What stories do they contain?
Gerry LaFemina: Frisbee
Remember how effortlessly those guys caught it behind their backs or else by tapping it first from underneath so it paused in place and spun like a galaxy.
Valerie Bacharach: Gratitude Journal
I was sure that I had failed my mother, unable to keep her in her home, as I had once promised.
