Skip the B. S. By Skip Eisiminger “Someone said that civilization began when the first hominid said, ‘Welcome’ instead of braining a traveler with his club. I used to remind my Humanities classes…

“When I was a child, I was intrigued by a dainty vial of smelling salts which my mother kept in her ‘pocketbook’ and brought with her everywhere. On a hot summer day, when…

Speculative Friction “The bear wasn’t ready for winter, or me/sitting behind the glow of fire/he could not see through/or the Montana Longbow sleeping on a log./My dozen poached trout could’ve landed me a…

Off the Page By Dr. Jason Page “As someone who grew up being forced to read Shakespeare in dusty school editions, I never imagined I’d one day be collaborating with an algorithm to…

“Designed-to-fail when it was created during the Ronald Reagan administration, the IPCC has concluded that the end-Permian Mass Extinction Event was minor compared to the current one. It’s not even close. In fact,…

Singing & Drowning By Janet Kenny “It was definite. My father’s good sister had declared the state intermediate school, where she had taught, to be unsuitable for me. Instead, I was to be…

“And it wasn’t only Giórgis’s rental that felt like a place the Cyclops could live in. This whole island could have been Homer’s Land of the Cyclops, with its rocky coast, its arid…

Singing & Drowning By Janet Kenny “All my conscious life there was talk of war. Later, it was The War Effort. My mother went once a week to help out at the Patriotic…

Plant People By Jenks Farmer “I could claim that it started with my father who, while working on the railroad, had an ongoing quest to find the kind of falling-down old farmstead that…

“But somewhere along the way, as always happens, everything changed. The neighbor across from us expanded a business that previously didn’t encroach on our street, cutting down two magnolias and a couple of…