1: It Wouldn’t Be Macramé On March 18th, I thought I had the stomach flu. We were early enough in the pandemic to be aware of the virus –…
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Creative Nonfiction / EssayFamilyPodcastsWalking with Tres Horny Boys; Finding narrative comfort in re-listening to The Adventure Zone: Balance podcast
Magnus Burnsides plaintively asks Paloma, “Did—did I make the right choice?” and I found myself sniffling, blaming it on the fresh chill as I walked through a swirl of dying…
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Orchard Grove is a squat windowless building with a green shingled overhang beveled around wooden soffits. I used to walk there from Gerry Rushlow’s farm. Or was it Sally Rushlow’s…
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“alert” On Monday I drove through a fresh snow to get my first dose of the Moderna vaccine. By the time I arrived home, there were multiple alerts on…
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A couple of weeks before COVID-19 closed down all the restaurants in NYC, Paul the server was standing in the kitchen, waiting for a pasta course to be plated. Paul…
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Before we could identify both its virus and disease names. Before our painter, Mark came and fingered the hairline cracks in my office walls, not erasing, but following their lead…
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Image Credit: Author’s father, of her mother and herself, on Waiheke Island, Auckland, Christmas Eve 2019. My aunt and my mother finally stopped speaking to each other on an early-autumn…
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During the 2020 summer of COVID, empty nesters themselves, my octogenarian parents adopted baby birds. Here’s how it happened: in the process of cutting down dead wood from the weeping…
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Year fifteen at Fresno State: empty classrooms and empty nest. I begin the online semester fearing that my efforts to gain institutional support for outreach to southwest Fresno in the…
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The last time I saw my grandmother alive, I knew she wasn’t going to recognize me. I had a cotton mask over my nose and mouth for most of the…
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When I make bread, I focus on the feel of the dough, the windowpane test for gluten elasticity, the delicate question of adding a pinch of flour. Will it turn…
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Image Credit: photos (Stephanie Astrow); design (Lilly Astrow) Teaching under any circumstances, dire or otherwise, is largely about holding back. You love your students, of course. That’s a prerequisite.…
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We have no neighbors across the street, save the red fox and the gray fox, the mulberry trees, and the bunnies. This spring, rather suddenly, the mulberry trees fruited in…
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Image Credit: Side-street in Staroměstská, Prague. Taken on B&W Fomapan 400 by Lu Gallagher. On a Sunday evening in Malostranská, returning from Shakespeare a Synové where I had just…
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