Lent

Lent

The annual nightmare began each Ash Wednesday, when I found myself another year further into the darkness of adolescence and agnosticism. Was it getting smeared with ashes that I dreaded, or was it the upcoming extra hours in this huge, stale box? I’d trudge up the...
Z. U.

Z. U.

The shepherd will tend his sheep. The valley will bloom again. And Jimmy will go to sleep In his own little room again. There’ll be—   We should have seen it coming. We really should have. Perhaps some of us did, saw the darkening skies of disease, the scudding...
Olives

Olives

When people usually think about a holiday dinner, they imagine turkey, cranberry sauce, the usual staples, along with their own customized favorites, sweet potato pie, creamed onions, frozen peas. When I think of that special dinner, which I traditionally make twice a...
Apekalypse

Apekalypse

Such an event had never befallen our village. We were so remote, so peaceable, so good. Of course, we had heard of plagues, but they seem to have been generally a cataclysm of the past, wrought largely upon distant and deserving populations. So, imagine our wonder...
Buzzed!

Buzzed!

I’ve always wanted to do it. But I’ve always been afraid to do it. We all have challenges we face fearlessly, and we all have issues that terrify us. One of the worst things we do to one another is ridicule one another because those issues differ from person to...