The gift of the fungi
For months now, apocalyptic anxiety has propelled me from my bed in the wee hours. Not doing enough! Hell in a handbasket! Time is…
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What word to bring for Easter?
On my way to church Sunday, I heard an NPR story about a ministry to homeless youth in Seattle. The tables are set once…
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Orange silk
A splash of brilliant orange between many layers. A green dress, moth-eaten, in which she had once danced with her uniformed father amidst the…
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Housing for all
I slept through ninth grade U.S. History. The following year, my sophomore government class was a joke. Our teacher was regularly out sick and…
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“The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon….the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.” – H….
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The labor that bore me
I have birthed four children. Any mother will tell you that birth is a labor of love and insist that the memory of the…
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On privilege and plunder
My small community at Kalamazoo Peace House has been reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ new book, Between the World and Me (Spiegel and Grau, 2015). Structured…
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Sounds like home
Werner likes to crouch in his dormer and imagine radio waves like mile-long harp strings, bending and vibrating over Zollverein, flying through forests, through…
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Original thrift
Ma was boiling molasses in a pan. When Laura’s kettle was full of popped corn, Ma dipped some into a large pan, poured a…
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Shadows on Snow
“There’s something about shadows on snow,” she told me. So I noticed too— midnight-blue shadows of winter-stripped branches printed on midday snow. When you…
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