All posts by Susan Shafarzek

Stolen Summers by Lauren Dunn

Photo of beach with turquoise water
 

I’m sweeping up a pile of sand from the hardwood floor. It’s everywhere. Under each throw mat and area rug. In the corners of the room and hiding beneath the wicker chair nearest the front door. In the folds of the couch and the crevice of the doorjamb. As I sweep, I begin to gently cry. Big fat tears hitting my cheeks, rolling down my collarbone. I’m taken aback. The spool of emotion wound tightly inside of my chest unfurling. My mind is a carousel of slides from this summer and those before it. Sunburns … Continue reading Stolen Summers by Lauren Dunn

We Have Winning Essays by Susan Shafarzek

Photo of fireworks in sky
 

The annual contest is a big event here at Streetlight‘s essay/memoir section. We never know what our invitation is going to bring, but it’s always interesting. This year we’ve been especially fortunate. Our first prize winner is Christopher Ghattas. His brilliant essay, “Final Thoughts,” is at once a narrative, a reaction, and a meditation, full of sharp wisdom and surprising humor. Our second prize winner, Ruth Knesevich, takes her inspiration “From a Persian Kitchen.” In an essay both culinary and emotional, she brings us the essence of a rich culture. It’s a culinary delight. Third … Continue reading We Have Winning Essays by Susan Shafarzek

Asa Fowler by Miles Fowler

Photo of painting of menn in office
 

I am leery of ancestor worship, but the more I research the history of my great-great grandfather, Asa Fowler, the more I find admirable about him.  He was born the youngest of a dozen children on a farm in Pembroke, N.H. in the year 1811. A sickly boy, he was only able to do light farm work, and it was determined early on that he should become a teacher. So, he was sent to the local academy in Pembroke, where he turned out to be an excellent student. After leaving the academy, Asa went to … Continue reading Asa Fowler by Miles Fowler

Cicadian Rhythm by Quincy Gray McMichael

Photo of cicade on tree branch
 

Quincy Gray McMichael has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2024 Essay/Memoir Contest    As I stretch my shoulders, arms aloft, the Monongahela Forest yawns through a narrow split in the trees. Across the road from where I sit, the tranquil understory draws my eye past the weathered porch railing, my ever-growing grass, baby blueberries, high-tensile farm fence, and the last lilac bush. I spot a fiery flash among the scrub and shadows, a thin flag of tabby-tail above the green. Shredder, the orange cat, shoots from the underbrush and across the gravel—a one-lane road … Continue reading Cicadian Rhythm by Quincy Gray McMichael

Death Reprise by Lauren Dunn

White funeral wreath
 

My mom died sometime last year. And it’s funny, I couldn’t tell you exactly when it happened. Well, it’s not so much funny as it is strange. Because I wasn’t expecting her to die at all. And what you should also understand is that she’s not actually dead. Not physically at least. She’s still kicking up dust. Texting. Breathing. But she’s somehow also gone; or at least for me she is. She’s dead in a way I’ve found excruciatingly hard to pinpoint and to process. It happened some time after my Dad died. He did … Continue reading Death Reprise by Lauren Dunn

Slugger by Walter Lawn

Photo of pigeon on sidewalk
 

I know a story they left out of her obituary. In the late 1970s and early 80s I worked in the Development Department at The Franklin Institute, the Philadelphia science & industry museum. Stanley Pearson worked in the same department. We were an odd pair. I was in my twenties, liberal, struggling to support my wife and me while she was in grad school; for fun, I spent my free time programming an early CP/M microcomputer. Stan was in his sixties, conservative, a part of the network of Princeton alumni who ran Philadelphia business and … Continue reading Slugger by Walter Lawn

The Grass is Always Greener by Miles Fowler

Growing up in Massachusetts in the 1950s and early 1960s, my schoolmates and I used to watch a children’s television show called Big Brother. At noon every day we were allowed to go home for lunch since many of us lived close to our elementary school, and at a quarter past noon, we would gather in front of the television and watch “Big Brother,” a man who was middle-aged, balding, pudgy, and bespectacled. He sat in a rocking chair in front of a fireplace, surrounded by a dozen kids, ranging in age perhaps from five to ten, whom he dubbed “small fry.” He opened every show by singing The Grass is Always Greener (in the Other Fellow’s Yard), accompanying himself on the ukelele.

Even when I was a small fry myself, I thought Emery made an odd kiddie show host. He seemed more like a great uncle or even a grandfather than an older brother. Yet something about him made us feel that he was talking to us rather than talking down to us.

Big Brother Bob Emery had been hosting children’s programs since 1921 when he broke into radio at age twenty-four, starting in his native Massachusetts and later moving to New York. In New York, besides working in radio, he hosted The Small Fry Club for the short-lived DuMont Television Network. It was a six-day-day-a-week children’s show that was very similar to the one he would host when he moved back to Boston in1952. By that time, thanks to George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, “Big Brother” had taken on sinister connotations, but “Big Brother” had long since become one of Emery’s trademarks, along with that penchant for referring to children as “small fry.”

The Grass is Always Greener, the song that opened each episode, was a 1924 hit that Emery had clearly chosen for its expression of contentment with what we have as opposed to being envious of others. He also regularly promoted the Jimmy Fund, a local charity for cancer research and treatment. He encouraged children to donate their small change, promoting generosity along with the sense of gratitude and humility invoked by the theme song.

Emery barely ever moved from his chair, making the show static by today’s standards, but in the early 1950s we were enthralled just to be watching anything on television. Then, too, he showed cartoons, which in the 1950s, usually meant cartoons that had once been shown in movie theaters since there was not the vast archive of old television programs that we have today.

The program aired Monday through Friday from a quarter past noon to one o’clock. This timeslot worked well enough for kindergarteners who attended morning sessions and had their afternoons free, but it meant that older children had to stop watching Big Brother in the middle of the program and get back to class before the bell rang.

One day, I was in my first-grade class in the early afternoon when a teacher dragged a boy from the second grade into our classroom. Our teacher and this other teacher essentially perp-walked him in front of us and demanded to know why he was late coming back from lunch.

“I wanted to watch the end of Big Brother,” he admitted tearfully.

Far from enjoying the schadenfreude of this moment, I cringed at seeing his humiliation. I was disillusioned to realize that an older boy could be so easily broken. I had thought that second graders were made of stiffer stuff. It seemed as if the dark side of the grass always being greener was played out in this drama. If I had had the vocabulary for it, I might have thought, “There but for the grace of God go I.” I, too, would have preferred to stay home and watch the rest of Big Brother rather than come back to school.

Photo of kids on floor watching tv
The Kids Watch TV by Ivan Pope. CC license.

Miles Fowler
Miles Fower is a frequent contributor to these pages. He lives and writes in Charlottesville, Va.

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My Funny Little Valentine by Lucinda Guard

Photo of candy hearts
 

HEART OF GOLD The calendar waves its pages, and announces it’s time for our annual tradition of tapping trees and sugaring. Oh wait: not you! No more plates full of sticky, sweet, heart-shaped pancakes drenched in homemade maple syrup, surrounded by sausage patties with a heap of cheesy potatoes. It’s against the new rules. My strong, healthy, hard-working, and big-hearted husband has Congestive Heart Failure. HEART THROB Frank Sinatra sang, “Each day is Valentine’s Day around here.” Ironically, it seems Ol’ Blue Eyes was singing our theme song. Our house is full of heartfelt reminders. … Continue reading My Funny Little Valentine by Lucinda Guard

The Rauschenberg Retrospective by Ingrid Jandrewski


 

Studio by Katy Nicosia. CC license. When we first enter the Robert Rauschenberg retrospective at the Tate Modern, my parents’ eyes brighten as if they’re greeting old friends. Before they suggested we spend their last day in the UK here, I had no idea who Rauschenberg was, no idea that he was such a major influence on their own work. Dad gravitates to a print of a tyre track that spans an entire wall, Mom to a monoprint of two figures in a field of blue. I split myself between them, not wanting to miss … Continue reading The Rauschenberg Retrospective by Ingrid Jandrewski

The Last Time by Cheryl Somers Aubin

Photo of array of different Christmas cookies
 

We never know when it will be the last time, do we? If I had known, I would have paid closer attention to the story mom shared about her acquaintance’s daughter’s friend. I usually listened half-heartedly to these stories she often told. I probably wanted to tell her more about my own life. But that time, the last time, I would have listened, maybe asked a question or two. I’d have leaned into my mother, given her a smile, and taken the time to be completely and fully present. We would have been standing side-by-side … Continue reading The Last Time by Cheryl Somers Aubin