John Lewis

Two days before his death, John Lewis submitted an Opinion piece to The New York Times that he hoped would be published on the day of his funeral. “Though I am gone, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe.”  While my time here …

WATCHING OUT

We see the gulls and lately pelicans fishing low over the surf each day. This morning we saw a solitary Canada goose. It is not the first time. There was a goose that hung about Asbury Creek a few years ago. It was there for weeks in the late summer and we hope it eventually …

BEAUTY TOO

Two months ago I wrote here about beauty and about the storks nesting in England for the first time in a hundred years. It seems a long time ago. Yesterday, for the first time in over four months, I ate a meal I had not myself cooked. It was a risk and we will not …

FOG

We are early risers, getting up with the sun and preferring to be out on our walk while the sand is empty of people. This morning we could look south toward the Cape and see fog as if it were moving onshore. There was little light in the sky and only the faintest hint of …

THE GOOD OPTION

How do you stop the hurt of having to breathe? —Toi Derricotte from The Telly Poems "His father would say, 'You are not good for your own sake. That probably isn’t even possible. You are good as a courtesy to everyone around you. Keeping a promise or breaking it, telling the truth or lying—these things …

POSSIBLE

In addition to classes called "What If" about speculative fiction and "Utopia and Dream" about idealistic societies both real and imagined, I taught genre fiction to my sophomores and juniors. Science fiction, fantasy, mystery . . . I found short story examples and we read and discussed the expected tropes and the real-life satisfactions, explorations, …

ANNIVERSARY

There had been drug dealers and prostitutes and a "witch" living there. The police would come for Debbie when she had a drug-overdose-triggered "complete psychotic break" and the FBI to investigate number 12, where a member of the Weather Underground had stayed. Rent was cheap and the location just up the street from the Blue Moon …

PROTECT and SERVE

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN + Oregon Live) — Four Oregon State Police troopers went into a Corvallis coffee shop without wearing a mask, which prompted the OSP superintendent to put at least one of them on administrative leave during the investigation. [The state has mandated masks for everyone inside public places as a way to stem …

HAPPY CANADA DAY

In the second and third terms of my MFA program in 2006, I wrote my critical essay about Canadian writer and Nobel Laureate Alice Munro. My first drafts discussed several of her stories and my essay ballooned past forty pages, but the final version was just over thirty pages, the maximum I was allowed, and focussed …