Way back in 1996 I graduated from John Marshall High School in Cleveland. About six months ago I found out that this year I was among the honorees for the school’s Hall of Fame. It seemed unlikely that I’d […]
Winter Star
Last night I spent hours watching people jump from burning buildings. Winter left me thinking about plane crashes, explosions, the number of days we’ve gone without an incident in the workplace, fingers that don’t bend the way they’re supposed […]
this is how it happens
(Trigger warning. This is a discussion of rape and rape culture, and it’s about to get raw, because I cannot take scrolling through message board stupidity anymore. So there’s this, and it’s all I’ve got. – Amanda) It’s the […]
A Day in the Life of Poverty
You roll over and look at your clock. It used to be a cell phone. Now it’s just a clock. 6:30AM. Time to get out of bed. St. Vincent’s starts getting rowdy around 7AM, so you need to […]
The Falls Apart, or a Case for Hope
Headlines are murder to my eyes. Today’s reading allowed me to learn than the top 1% of the country now controls 40% of the America’s wealth — the highest percentage since 1927. These people send peasants in RVs to […]
You don’t have to go to college. Really.
One of the ways I wage-slave is online tutoring. Each day I slug a few cups of battery acid strength coffee and then nurse papers written by college students with my MFA-teet of pseudo-expertise. Often assignments are crafted with […]
Ebook now available (and all these other things)
It’s pseudo-summer in Portland, which means sun bursts interrupting our regularly scheduled rainfest. Hooray for pale pallor disruption! Hooray for tacos and margaritas on porches! Hooray for all the things! The ebook for Psychopomp Volume One has arrived, and […]
animals and empathy: a response to those who don’t comprehend fundraising for “just a cat”
For every ten people who easily comprehend the unique bond between humans and animals of all sorts, there’s one suffering some deficiency of feeling, and unable/unwilling to acknowledge this as exactly that. While I’ll stop short of saying they […]
Boston
Though it happened hours ago, I still have not released the memory of blood splattered streets, a fluid filled abstract expression, a collection of ink blots with DNA imprints a doctor will press to medical files if you’ll just offer what you think it looks like. That one looks like a butterfly…like a man on a horseback…like a viking raider…like a rose cut off at the petals.