Paul Christensen: Three Cheers for Autumn
I woke up this morning to a chill in the air. I closed the bedroom windows and shivered into my clothes, then hurried down to the kitchen to consult the … Continue reading
Bart Plantenga: How the Soul Remains Miraculously Intact Despite 2000 Rejections
…we must learn to nest in piles of our own rejection slips and somehow effectively grab hold of the levers and buttons that control the means of writerly production…
Adrian Blevins: How I wrote The Brass Girl Brouhaha
I wrote The Brass Girl Brouhaha by tattooing the word WRONG across my heart to help me muster the strength I’d need to argue with a world that wanted me to say “hey, y’all!” in a hill-country accent sipping tea under a dogwood in a pink smock smattered with etchings of ivy.
Derrick Z. Jackson: The Boy Scouts can do better than teaming up with Trump’s EPA
In more sane times, it would be natural for the Boy Scouts of America to share its do-gooder image with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Elizabeth Weil: The Climate Crisis Is Happening Right Now
Record high temperatures. Record fires. Record smoke. Former California Gov. Jerry Brown has a few things to say about the state’s converging apocalypses.
Paul Christensen: The Grinding Gears of Time
Trump’s house of cards is built on ruses and Iago-like deceptions, a palace of flimsy lies waiting for the door to fly open and a gust of honest wind to sweep them all away.
Henry Beston: A Year of life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod
The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach. I have heard them all, and of the three elemental voices, that of ocean is the most awesome, beautiful and varied.
Gerry LaFemina: All These Lamps and Yet —
I used to believe in enlightenment, in an age of it coming. I believed, too, in love with a capital L, believed in the upper case abstractions, believed I could list the capitols of Europe where I believed I’d visit. At least I got that last one right.
Hana Kiros: A Tale of Two Teens — When White Killers Are Treated Better Than Black Victims
Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, was killed for walking home at night—Kyle Rittenhouse, a white teenager, is being defended by Republicans after murdering two BLM protesters.
Paul Christensen: A Comforting Breeze
I am hopeful again, a man who has awakened from a long dream to find that heaven has opened its granary at last and spilled this nourishment down upon each of us, all of us.
Beth Peyton: Physically Distant and Socially Awkward
“You’re not wearing a mask,” you said to the salesclerk.
Tom Engelhardt: The World We are Passing on to our children and grandchildren
Let’s just hope that, when it comes to creating a better world out of such a god-awful mess, the generations that follow us prove better at it than mine did.
Patricia A. Nugent: A Yawn is Better than a Gasp
I’m sending money, canvassing, registering voters, and voting for Joe.
Alexis Rhone Fancher: Post Mortem
It’s the last time, I swear, except this time I mean it. The last time I mourn Kate so hard I don’t eat, unless you consider alcohol a meal. The last time I drive drunk the five miles to Chuck’s house, at midnight, despondent, disheveled, swigging Stoli…
