Uncaptured
At one special place, if I look to the right at exactly the right moment, I see a long straight sideroad made of dirt. It slopes down easy…
childhood
OtherSpeak: Someone Who Knew Shari As a Child Finally Speaks Up
A contributor writes: “She climbed trees and slept in haymows, and she always loved the earth – flowers and kittens and springtime…”
A story from childhood
But it ended with my mother running out into the snow in her stocking feet. And me sitting in a chiropractor’s office.
My church experience
In a white country church house with six pews on the right and six pews on the left, I formed my first ideas of God and his people.
In praise of the soybean
My dad grew edamame before it was cool. We called it by another name back then. In the garden he claimed from a Minnesota meadow, he planted rows of soybeans, poor man’s food he remembered from his boyhood. When the plants died in the late summer, he uprooted them by the dozen and laid them …
Forbidden fruit
I think of this story around this time of year, when our bushes hang heavy with berries. Once upon a time when I was a little girl, we went to stay in the home of some friends in Virginia. When we arrived, our hosts showed us around and made us comfortable, in true Valley style. …
Two pictures that make me incredibly happy
Recently I came across two pictures on social media that filled me with joy. They are wildly different: the first, pristine and elegant, mysterious, imaginative; the second, grainy and smudgy and hopelessly outdated. Look at this. Rob Gonsalves is a Canadian artist who likes playing with optical illusion and duplicate realities. Here is more of …