“One day, though, I had an epiphany. I must have been about twelve or 13, and my classmate Doris had asked me over for Sunday lunch. They had no servants and her mother…

“Our persistent friendship continued despite the day ‘they’ separated us (or maybe because of that day). After all, who knows how the ill meaning or well-meaning choices of adults will ultimately affect children? That day—the…

Off the Page By Dr. Jason Page “As a recreation therapist with a growing familiarity with AI, I initially dismissed its ability to understand leisure—that quintessentially human space between obligations. Yet after witnessing…

Singing & Drowning By Janet Kenny “When I was young, I believed that nothing ever happened to people in small towns. Only growth and pain. Life and death. I traveled around the world…

“Stuck? Here is a little apartment where the coffee got cold/and the woman of his dreams sits up in bed/eating hangover ravioli while this man rewrites instructions/on how to load a website full…

“These were clearly wild bison, at home again in the wild. And they’ve already transformed the place—new trails winding through the woods, droppings everywhere, tufts of fine brown underfur tangled in trees, wallows…

“Writing is magic. I have no idea how I go about it, or why it sometimes flows and other times doesn’t. But I do know I was given a lot of gifts, including…

“Truly, my mother was a hard, hard act to follow. Her black chignon, her enormous hats, her flawless, Charles-of-the-Ritz make-up, her back-seamed stockings, their seams razor-straight, her high, high-heeled pumps, her three (never…

“On an artistic note, Samos also became the muse from whom I garnered inspiration for my seascapes, and also for some mermaid paintings. Gauguin had Tahiti, Cezanne had Mont Saint-Victoire, I have Samos!…

Skip the B.S. Skip Eisiminger “Unlike his Greek neighbors, the author of Genesis took a different approach to the subject of man’s mortality: humans were created, He/She said, from the dust and bones…