Author Archives: Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

“In daylight, one person in the house—the straight, white male—regularly storms out to rage impotently at the squirrels. In the night, the insomniac (I) goes out to startle the raccoons on the largest feeder. Delicately, balancing like equilibrists, they lean out on ample haunches from the porch rails, gathering in seed with their sapient paws. […]

“At the beginning of ‘the curriculum that will be COVID,’ I read whatever I could find regarding the influenza pandemic of 1918, an experience that has all but vanished from contemporary memory with the deaths of the last of us who were affected by it. I wanted to educate myself about how viruses jump from […]

“A dear friend of mine, a Southern woman long expatriated to England, sent me the following letter, and I would like to share it, anonymously, with a larger readership . . . for its poignancy and precision. For its perfection in this time of woe. My friend would cast a wan eye on those alliterative […]

“Because I paid for Ouzo, I claimed naming rights and, though he had no ‘papers,’ we knew he had a pedigree. Ouzo was a pure-bred dalmatian, with all the havoc such breeding (such over-breeding) entails, and so I gave him a name with some history, some weight. Because he was both sweet and strong, he […]

“Though Steadman and I—on those so very rare occasions when we meet—are more or less overcome, for the duration of our time together, and all but speechless, remembering our mutual losses, we also comprise, for one another, unique reservoirs of memory. At 68 and 85, respectively, Steadman and I have been actors in the family […]

“Throughout the land, Democrats and Independents alike await (like Godot) the reappearance of Special Counsel Robert Swan ‘Bob’ Mueller III, who, we pray (to no one in particular) will come forth, sooner rather than later, to present evidence of Trump, Pence, Trump campaign members, and Russian operatives’ coordinated efforts to throw our last presidential election. […]

“Because I paid for Ouzo, I claimed naming rights and, though he had no ‘papers,’ we knew he had a pedigree. Ouzo was a pure-bred dalmatian, with all the havoc such breeding (such over-breeding) entails, and so I gave him a name with some history, some weight. Because he was both sweet and strong, he […]

“Iyengar Yoga master-teacher, Kofi Busia, writes: ‘Health is not, and cannot be, an individual affair. It is a community—indeed, a cosmic—affair. Individuation is the root cause of all suffering. A community, even a yoga community, sickens when its individual members do not extend the bonds of unity to one another through the exercise awareness and […]

“The year of work was intense and solitary. Helen, on her coast, set me tasks; I, on the other coast, took them on. One involved visualizing the mindful subtraction—element by element—of parts of my physical body, until . . . what, finally, was left? It would be inappropriate to document this meditation, in full, here, […]

“What I do remember, and perhaps few others are alive to share these memories now, is that, before the tourists, came the painters. Greece, and the Cyclades in particular, with their ethereal, stunning light, called artists forth from all over the world. Luis and Lilly were not alone, painting in cold island studios in 1960. […]