The stalemate was over corned-beef hash. As sunlight faded in the kitchen, family life went on elsewhere without me. It was a meal without g...

Good morning! You may call me Ellie. I will be your guide today. My Abenaki name is Lady Slipper. This exhibit hall is circular, in keepin...

In the amount of time it takes you to brush your teeth He assembles 500-piece jigsaw puzzles Starting by turning every interlocking bit Over...

          born 8/30/2025 A fire in the Olympic Mountains cast a golden spell on the moon the moment of your birth. Out on the deck, a breeze...

Our third-grade teacher, Mrs. Dyer, says to us: No Chewing Gum. But ruminants, we chew and chew — Double Bubble, Juicy Fruit — and blink awa...

After the train to Canton no one believed I wanted to walk. There is the train they said. Or bus. But for twenty days I’ve walked across Chi...

Bless these ferns that struggle to lift their heads in a world where temptation is a bulldozer and man is blind to everything that doesn’t b...

If I wake early I walk toward the sun; if late, away. I accept what the island provides. Obvious things I leave: shells, numinous and ordina...

If only the wind had leaned in with a whisper, instead of slamming the door like a judge. If only the tea had steeped a little longer, and t...

The woman lies alone in the field— you’ve seen the painting—peering over the horizon. The gray, weathered house looms behind her, overwhelms...

Four days before Christmas,           he died. She wrapped herself           in silence. No need for that constant stream of one-sided conve...

We are becoming a police state, says HCR, who lives across the river. Apparently, she never sleeps. Her essays, cited thoroughly —to rub met...

Methodist Social Services sends mention my maternal grandmother suffered with arthritis, died of diverticulitis, but there is nothing more. ...

My impatient adolescent brain thought Alexander the Great got it right when he severed the Gordian knot with one slash. I spent many years t...

No one will pause at the headline to the obituary I won’t have, the kind you don’t have to buy, written before you die. Reporters actually i...

wasn’t a question asked in my family, and so remained unanswered. Adults avoided emotional outbursts; salt tossed over a shoulder took care ...

When my late neighbor moved from Southern California to Southern New England, she was a new widow. She told, repeatedly, stories of her youn...

It's not just the pretty words or how he seems to read her heart; it’s the way he kisses her wedding ring, says he loves her more than l...

Old and sway-backed, starved and abused, two horses sold for meat were bought and saved by my compassionate friend. Let loose to graze in ve...

It wanted to stand on its own, that straw scarecrow with square pink patches sewn into its cheeks to resemble rosy mirth. It never failed to...