The Blue Shirt As the doors close on 2016 we may find ourselves casting a backward glance, not only on the past year but back over our entire life as well, especially if we’ve reached a certain age. For many of us those very mundane experiences from our childhood remain vivid and profound throughout our adult life. They seem to hold some secret, some meaning that eludes us but that we are always reaching for, reaching back into memory to bring them to life again, trying to hear what they are saying to us now. … Continue reading The Blue Shirt →
Mount Fuji My friend always wanted to see the mountain with its eternal snow, but she never crossed the ocean to Japan. Instead, she bought a small reproduction of Hokusai’s “Boy Viewing Mount Fuji” and hung it on her bedroom wall. Every morning it greets the daylight: the boy with his back to her as he faces the mountain and plays a flute, his body perfectly balanced on a thick tree branch that seems to slice Fuji’s heart with a rugged abandon. “In another life,” she vows, “I’ll come back as that flute, the … Continue reading Two Poems by Linda Nemec Foster →
Donald Trump said he would make America great again if he became president. Now, as his inauguration approaches, each news cycle brings further proof that if he succeeds on his own terms, the moral core of the nation will rot. What can we do besides cry foul or capitulate in cynical silence? As a spur to meaningful action, I recommend the saving words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran minister imprisoned in Germany in 1943 and executed by the Nazis in 1945. In his posthumously published Letters and Papers from Prison, Bonhoeffer writes eloquently about … Continue reading Listening to Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Hilary Holladay →
Podcast: A young girl and her brother experience a miracle of nature that later becomes a lesson for life.
A memoir performed by Jennifer Sims.
Read the story online: The Whirlwind by Lyn Martin
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Today, as I write this, December 11, 2016, is National Noodle Ring Day. What, again? you say. So soon? But that’s how the holy days are, aren’t they, always upon us, or so it seems. I’m reminded of a wonderfully snarky thing I once saw in the New Yorker, back when the New Yorker —and maybe the whole world—used to be a lot funnier. It was one of those little squibs they then had a habit of republishing, a bit of hapless advertising copy from, I think, Goodman Noodles, that went, Vary your Lenten menu with a noodle dish a day. As if … Continue reading Noodling →
Dazzling Dinoflagellates We gather when the moon is hidden in earth shadow, stand in a group to hear facts, take advice, don life jackets that cover our lungs, our hearts. We drive toward a cove at the salt sea edge where the plankton proliferate, persist in a small shallow bay with its twisted neck to the sea, its reef a wall that holds them in. These bright, tiny organisms, single cell, simple we call them, beckon us to witness their wonder. Under wisps of night light we load into kayaks, follow one dim beacon. … Continue reading Dazzling Dinoflagellates by Martha Snell →
A few years ago the Northumberland County prison in Sunbury, Pennsylvania burned down. It was a spectacularly awful fire of an historically neglected building. That it caught fire was of no surprise to anyone. The prison board immediately convened to discuss a contingency plan. Surrounding counties could absorb the inmate population but not the corrections officers and administrative staff. State unemployment compensation takes two weeks to kick in. So the board announced they would pay the prison employees for two weeks worth of work they were not able to perform. Cue the public outcry. Nobody … Continue reading Hurt People Elect to Hurt People →
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