“Affliction is a well-visited destination, but one on no one’s published itinerary. Our visas are universally stamped (in invisible ink) at birth (and, often, before birth) in our mutable flesh. But, until we…

“If I’d known she’d tried to kill him, I might have sat at the counter instead of at one of her tables. But I hadn’t known, and I did sit at her table.”—William…

“The novel I finished reading/last night/in my system like a drug,/a hangover, numbing, dulling,/but for something dark, unseen,/some residue, some fated turn./I have outlived myself,/what now?”—Patricia Waters Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE…

“Occasionally, I see this question, usually in a social-media forum: If you were to eliminate one thing, what would it be? For me, there is no question: ownership. The living planet faces many…

“On the other side of the Facebook coin, there’s ‘online validation’: buying 500 ‘likes,’ for example, for $6.99. According to one validation provider in an odd effort to reassure customers, their ‘likes’ are…

“As my father was born on June 2, 1892, I never fail to think of him this month. A sugar broker who loved his job and the commodity, he would have been horrified…

“We started with an outhouse in the yard and a hand pump in the kitchen. The contractor installed indoor plumbing, but the house was still drafty and we had a single wood stove…

“I burned most of the day kicking around, eyeing my watch. I passed a few lookers on the way home who, under normal circumstances, might have earned a second or third leer, but…

“Now, yet another front has opened up in the battle against deception. Technology has advanced to such a degree that the adage ‘seeing is believing’ is no longer a guarantor of veracity. So,…

“Pop saw no reason that my youth and gender should prevent me from being interesting company for him. So, while other little girls learned decorum and how to curl their hair, I listened…