When my late husband died and his body was removed from the house, I was suddenly very much alone. Dear friends were at hand, but there was no one to go to bed with and sob, no one to wake up with and sob. So when I awoke on December 25, 2015 a widower, I…
As my semester is winding down, I am mentally reviewing the class that I taught this semester. It is loads more fun to review my lecture notes, slides, and activities than to read papers or prepare for the final. I have been teaching for 47 years; I think I would like to make it to…
For a while now I have been promising some friends that I would construct a hat that included a sort of wing or tag off to one side, a la Minnie Pearl. I envision this chapeau to be less flashy than La Pearl’s but following the same premise. The hat would have an appendage that…
Yesterday I counted on the train to show up, the clerk at the station to be on time to sell me some tea, and the traffic lights to work. I relied on the gates to be opened by the staff, the train to have been cleaned others, and my ticket to be scanned accurately. I…
Counting on one another is a critical feature of community. We count on each other to keep traffic moving at a reasonable pace, to stop at red lights, to wait as pedestrians cross. We count on each other to mow lawns, prune shrubs, and pick up litter. We count on each other to pay our…
A big part of our common activity in local, regional, ethnic, racial, national, and international community has become watching. We watch television, video, movies, concerts, plays, fights, presentations. We watch celebrities. We watch a 90-year old Queen and a 57-year old Prince. We watch Michael, Whitney, Diana, David, Janice, and…
Samuel Barber’s aching melody for James Agee’s prose poem, Knoxville: Summer 1915, brings me back to the fall of 1969, when I was a student teacher at Lincoln Junior and Senior High School near Downtown Milwaukee. Leontyne Price’s recording of the song captured for me how unanswerable was the question I could not quite bring…
Some things happened to me between first and eighth grade over which my parents and family had little control. I have written elsewhere about my exit from heterosexuality. As daunting as that process was for my parents and me, its most obvious manifestations, its bumpiest ride, happened in adolescence and young adulthood. But in many ways,…
On Facebook I recently posted my annoyance with people who seem to require five or more feet of space around them while waiting in lines. I see this regularly in coffee shops, convenience stores, and ice cream shops. In the case of this last one, I saw a person next in line who was so…
Waiting for you is like waiting for rain in this drought. Useless and disappointing. — Hilary Duff, A Cinderella Story It feels like the number of ways we are urged to play it safe in life has grown past all reason. What was once a mild discomfort about asking a question “in front of a…
Creating Community for Everyone 