Photo by Yucel Moran on Unsplash . My website recently asked if I’d like some assistance composing a blog post. As I’m hopelessly behind in the book marketing department for Allegiance (promoting myself ranks right up there with a colonoscopy prep), I think: God, yes! I’ll take any help I can get! AI generously provided a menu of topics to choose from (crafting quirky characters, laughter as a writing tool, secrets revealed.) I clicked on humor as a theme. Before getting started though, I found myself glancing around for Mrs. Goode—my 4th grade teacher. … Continue reading The Art Of Unconventional Wit — With An AI Assist by Erika Raskin →
These searched for their family records, but could not find them and so were excluded from the priesthood as unclean. Ezra 2:62 I can’t tell you exactly what percent of my waking hours is spent looking for things. It could be as little as twelve percent. Probably closer to thirty. It’s worse at certain times of the year. Tax season seems to be a period when I drive myself mad searching for one thing or another: proof of a charitable contribution, a 1099 form, a statement from my Swiss bank saying everything’s cool. In my … Continue reading Missing by Richard Key →
Richard Key is the 1st place winner of Streetlight Magazine‘s 2020 Essay/Memoir Contest Honeybees are swarming outside my home office under the eaves of the roofline. I would say they are hovering like tiny drones, except they probably are tiny drones. They seem very interested in a certain corner of the house. I’m afraid I’ll get stung if I investigate too much, but I know exactly what they’re up to. Six years ago we had a similar problem and called in a “bee man” who opened up that same space, vacuumed them out with a … Continue reading Plight of the Humble Bee by Richard Key →
by Laura Marello Three years ago I phoned Specialty Exterminators in Lynchburg. My side yard, viewed from my screened porch, was starting to look like a cheap horror movie: rats, mice, and baby mice, running from my yard into the neighbors’ yard and back. Specialty Exterminators sent the rat baiter: an appropriately slim, tanned, wrinkled, grizzled–but in a handsome sort of way–sixty-something in a uniform much like a gas station attendant or a tow truck driver, park ranger, or sheriff would wear. As it turned out, I needed all five, and more. The Rat Baiter … Continue reading The Rat Baiter and Me →
by Patrice Calise When I was a little girl, I wanted to be one of the boys. No shock there: I grew up in a house with four older brothers, our parents, and several male dogs. My brothers got to run bare-chested in the heat of South Florida summers while I was encumbered with a full t-shirt and eventually (horribly) a bra. (I’d tried walking through the house without a t-shirt when I was 11. It didn’t end well). My brothers just never seemed bothered by their bodies because nobody ever seemed to be observing … Continue reading Gorilla My Dreams →
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