by Marian Beaman The Damage Mouth agape, wide-eyed and stunned at the WaWa station – I beheld a tee-shirted man holding a frosty drink and belly laughing at me. In the bay just ahead, this guy observed what I failed to see: two traffic cones smashed under my two wheels. Not one, but two—smashed flat! […]
by Kalí Rourke I love Halloween. When I was a child in Northwest Washington, it meant brisk mornings and cooler evenings with bright, colored leaves flying everywhere as my favorite holiday approached. I spent hours deciding what persona I would let loose each year. My mother was my willing conspirator and her crafty skills and imagination created prize-winning […]
by Sara Etgen-Baker Though landline phones may be on the endangered species list, in the 1950s and before, they were the lifeline of communities. For nearly 100 years, the landline was how we talked with someone who wasn’t in the room with us. We had only one telephone, a black rotary one, that sat […]
by Sara Etgen-Baker Last Thursday my washer quit spinning, leaving in its wake a tub full of wet, heavy clothes. I grumbled and stared inside the washer, knowing I lacked the arm strength to wring out the excess water in each item of clothing. What I wouldn’t have given at that moment to have my […]
by Susan W. Leicher For a long time, when things were going really badly with my oldest daughter–when her mental illness threatened to rip our whole family apart; my chief therapy was going to the YMCA. Sometimes I swam and sometimes I did yoga. When I swam, I swam competitively and aggressively; my bullet-like passage […]
by Carol Ziel “I’m finally having my psychotic break,” I thought as I watched bugs dance over the oriental rug and cozy up to me on the couch. They were trailing webs behind them. Just when those began to fade, shadows swooped in: Edgar Alan Poe style, Rod Sterling style, classic devil style. I had […]
