A tiny travelogue — I liked the silence best and the Milky Way, impossible to find at home. We felt safe to walk at night and return to the wood stove, we’d lit with crumpled news from the city. We picked up rocks and left their smooth and rough and ridged and cracked shapes …

Three mini DIY disasters — One I grew up watching my parents DIY most everything they could. My dad built a three-bedroom, two-bathroom addition onto our house with the help of our neighbor Cooper (who was like a third grandpa to my brother and me). …

A review of Convenience Store Woman — I happened to learn about Convenience Store Woman, a recent (2016) novel by Sayaka Murata in an email from my local library. The novel was going to be featured in an upcoming book club group, alongside a Japanese cookbook. I opened my Libby app and was able to download the…

A poem about the changing summers — I’ll wish more men had been afraid of burning down forests with sparks they thought they controlled as I watch TV on smoky summer nights and miss roasting potatoes in foil among orange-black coals. Over the last five or ten years, summertime has had a lot more smoke in it…

From a conversation with my dad — I’ve been having a weird bout of vertigo this week, so my dad drove me to the doctor’s office. As we sat in the waiting area, he told me a story, starting with, “I wish you had been there to help me.” My dad has a big vegetable garden right…

A very informal guide — You can make an appointment online to come and talk to the manager and have a little tour. You can ask about prices online, too. You can do a trial membership if you want to be sure before signing up for a long time. They’ll often give you a better…

A tiny review —

Sharing a quiz for those in the mood for self-reflection — Are we writers when it feels like we’re doing everything else but writing? Are we lonely writers or connected ones? I appreciated the moment of reflection that came over me when I first saw the series of ten questions about writing that Cristina Cattai put together. Even though I’ve been…

A prose poem about one of my favorite words — Mostly, we didn’t bake anything fancy or unusual. We made cookies we could pretend were healthy, cookies filled with oatmeal and raisins as a counterpoint to their cups of chocolate chips and sticks of salted butter. At Christmas, we’d spend a full day at my grandma’s house, baking our holiday…