TRIAGEA SHORT STORY Photo Courtesy of Daniel Ramierez My short story, TRIAGE, won first place in THE HOOK fiction contest. You can read it below. TRIAGE Thursday Night (Emma) Upstairs in bed, Emma hears the front door creak. She stiffens. It’s Alex coming in late. She listens to him open the refrigerator. Something tumbles […]
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HOLDING VIGIL:FOSTER CARE Photo Courtesy of Atharva Tulsi 0:00 / 0:00 Holding Vigil One result of the overturn of Roe v. Wade will be that many more children will be entering foster care, a system that is already underfunded and overwhelmed. Years ago, at my first job out of college, I saw firsthand how a
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IN DARKNESS AS IN LIGHT Painting by John Nicolay My short fiction just won first place in the Virginia Writers BLUE NIB contest and was published in the Journal of the Blue Ridge 2022. You can read it below. (Warning: the story deals with both domestic and child abuse.) IN DARKNESS AS IN LIGHT The
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CHA CHA REAL SOMOOTHMOVIE REVIEW When I heard that 25-year-old, Cooper Raiff, wrote, produced, directed, and starred in the quirky, indie film, Cha Cha Real Smooth, I had low expectations. I remembered suffering through two ponderous movies where Clint Eastwood and Denzell Washington directed their own acting. In both cases, the camera lingered much too
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DISPLACED Photo Courtesy of Farid Ershad 0:00 / 0:00 Displaced Mid-August last year, when Fatema* answered her cell phone, she heard her sister Shaima’s frantic voice, “I’m at the airport. Can you bring me my passport right now?” Not a simple request. On a normal day, it would have been dangerous for Fatema, who was
EINSTEIN ON TIME Photo Courtesy of Taton Moise 0:00 / 0:00 Einstein on Time I can’t pretend to understand what Einstein meant when he said that time was an illusion. In fact, I can’t pretend to understand much of what Einstein said. What I do know is that living during these Covid years has shifted
BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES Photo Courtesy of Hans Isaacson 0:00 / 0:00 Bonfire of the Vanities Twenty years ago, a reporter called me with bizarre news, so bizarre that I instantly wrote him off as a prank caller. He claimed he was from a town out West, maybe in Colorado? I am fuzzy on the
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The Kindness of Strangers seems to have slipped into existence with few people noticing. Except for a couple savage reviews, you won’t see much about the film online. The movie was released in December 2019, just before Covid kneecapped the world. Between that and the Rotten Tomato score of 31%, I don’t think it has
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PIVOTING INTO 2022 0:00 / 0:00 Pivoting into 2022 This past Thanksgiving, all our grandkids were visiting. At one point, three-year-old Bea and four-year-old Hank decided to prepare for an imaginary beach trip. Hank packed several face masks into his yellow leather bag and Bea jammed a bunch into her blue vinyl
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SWAN SONGMOVIE REVIEW Last night, I needed to take a vacation from real life, so I watched a movie called Swan Song. Mahershala Ali and Naomie Harris play married couple, Cameron and Poppy Turner. Unknown to Poppy, her husband is about to die. Cameron meets with Dr. Scott (Glen Close) to discuss a radical option,
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