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On the morning after my 44th birthday, early draft
On the morning after my 44th birthday (which, as of the first draft, was a little earlier today), I woke up a bit late, exhausted and sick from an infection. I was sick yesterday, too, but I felt better with some antibiotics and feel even better now. I hadn’t done everything I wanted to do…
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Good Ten List: Songs with a Story
In honor of National Tell a Story Day, I’ve made a list of ten great stories told in song, avoiding some of my favorites and some obvious choices. This is not a top-10 list; it is a good-10 list. I hope you find something you like here. Maybe you already know it, maybe it’s new….
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Have you seen the moon tonight
Did you see the moon tonight? I noticed it while I was driving home from the next town. Living in a flat, rural area often makes me long for the hills and valleys I knew as a kid. But where I live now, on the Delmarva Peninsula, the sunsets sprawl and sometimes the moon swells…
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It felt like a gift
When I was 23 or 24, in the early 2000s, I worked at a small company in a small office with thin, dingy carpet on the second floor of an orange building near the industrial area of Berkeley, California. It was a weird work environment, but I didn’t have enough work experience to know that…
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Lentish, or Proper Tuna Melt Construction
Once upon a time, a man named Jesus did a bunch of wholesome stuff. He never sinned, which is impressive considering he wasn’t allowed to eat pork because he was Jewish. He lived to be thirty-three years old and never ate bacon, not once, and imitation bacon bits hadn’t been invented yet. That’s called sacrifice, and you…
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Hopeless Cases
This is a love story. In your journal, you draw faces, words, and twirling patterns. In notebooks, you doodle improbable leaves and tesselating triangles. Sometimes, you draw a funny pig or a bird. Your mother used to draw the same triangles on notebook paper or envelopes as she talked on the phone. An old drafting pencil made particularly crisp…