As a kid, nothing pleased me more than to hear a grownup cut loose with a volley of curse words. I was an East Coast city girl; we didn’t say “cussing.” We said “swearing” but that was confusing because sometimes you were meant to swear, to promise you weren’t the one who made the crank calls to the elderly neighbor or clogged the toilet with paper towels....
Read More
Good morning from the parking lot behind Darling’s Auto in Augusta, Maine where I’ve spent the night in fetal position on the back seat of my electric vehicle, waiting the required seven hours for it to charge. Oh, it’s a wonder, this new form of transportation. Drive awhile, wait awhile; drive and charge, drive and charge. What’s time to a weary traveler?...
Read More
My grandfather was a slender man with a high forehead and immaculate hands. He was a fly fisherman, and the reason we didn’t see him often was because he fished all over the world instead of staying home in Connecticut with his family. My father was his son. My father wasn’t a slender man; he was of normal bulk and had a full head of hair. His hands...
Read More
When I was a freshman in college, I decided to memorize “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” It was a weird year for me. I was living in a converted lounge, the best the formerly all-male college could do to accommodate its new female students. My dorm room had a beige linoleum floor, stark white walls, no windows, and two bunk beds placed randomly in...
Read More
It’s been 270 million years since Flagstaff might have advertised itself as a beach destination. Not the kind with vendors and umbrellas, boardwalks and roller bladers, people large and small squirming with sunburn and spilling out of their swimsuits. No humans—no mammals at all—no birds, not even dinosaurs roamed these shores. The ocean’s evidence is...
Read More