LOST 0:00 / 0:00 Lost Among my family and friends, I’ve earned the dubious distinction of Most Likely to Get Lost. I started on this wayward path early on, most notably on my first job out of college—counseling juvenile delinquents (many violent) at a state mental institution. My boss asked me to attend a mini-wilderness […]
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EPIPHANY ON BARRACKS ROAD This is a story about discovering human goodness on a winter day when I felt knee-deep in human crankiness…. “Don’t eat the snow as you wait for the bus!” I shouted early one cold morning, as I pushed two sons out the front door, one to middle and the other to
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PICKING UP A CHICKEN Photo Courtesy of Ben Moreland 0:00 / 0:00 Picking Up a Chicken Picking up a live chicken requires a certain amount of intestinal fortitude—intestinal fortitude that everyone in my family lacks. And yet that doesn’t mean some of us aren’t good with animals. My son Ian is a stellar pet sitter,
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HOW TO GIVE A GOOD READING DESPITE YOURSELF Photo Courtesy of Kane Reinhold Have you ever been to a reading where the author creeps apologetically to the podium and then stammers through page after page without once changing expression or making eye contact with the audience? Plenty of good writers give bad readings. It’s painful
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DON’T IRON YOUR CLOTHES ON YOUR BODYNO MATTER HOW LATE YOU ARE Photo Courtesy of Annie Spratt 0:00 / 0:00 A Cautionary Tale The phone rang at six p.m. I was supposed to meet my husband and his colleagues at a fancy restaurant downtown for dinner at 6:15. I was running so late that I
HOW TO SURVIVE REJECTION Photo Courtesy of Jakayla Toney I am an expert in the field of rejection. I stand before you today with exquisitely impressive rejection credentials. I’ve been rejected by The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, a top children’s book agency in California, and my first grade boyfriend, Walter Flemke, may he