"I ate apple pie and ice cream—it was getting better as I got deeper into Iowa, the pie bigger, the ice cream richer...that's practically all I ate all the way across the country, I knew it was nutritious and it was delicious, of course." I set aside years of well cultivated hostility to team up ...
Little Women Christmas Breakfast
Last week I drove home to Ohio: twelve hours from Boston to Columbus, snow covered New England trees giving way to long stretches of farmland and grain elevators. I never thought I would be homesick for Ohio until I left it. For years I vowed to get out, convinced that some life affirming ...
The Boxcar Children Stew
My favorite game to play when I was a kid was homeless. I realize how terrible that sounds, but in my defense I lived in the suburbs. I didn't have a lot going on. Also, I was eight. I put peanut butter sandwiches in a bundle with a flashlight and my Tamagotchi (you know, the ...
So It Goes: Musings on Superficiality
When I feel particularly superficial, I recall this line in Slaughterhouse Five: "Like so many Americans she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops." Vonnegut referred to religious meaning, a crucifix as replacement for church, but I'd rather ...
Calpurnia’s Crackling Bread
As a child I wrote short stories with long, drawn out descriptions of food. This would have been forgivable had I written the rest of the story in the same amount of detail. Apparently plot was never particularly important. This uneven focus has continued into my adult life. Seeing a commercial or ...