Collection edited by robin ellen lucas

When it’s too much…

On the psychology of chaos… Too many words, too loud, too much criticism, too much emotion, too much of anything. Sometimes too much is just enough to learn valuable lessons. Humor honored too.

Latest

    THE MOMENT EVERYTHING CHANGED ABOUT EVERYTHING FOR ME

    I was exactly 50 years old and one month when it happened. It was easily the most dramatic experience of my life. But the drama was inside…
    Karen Kilbane8 min read

      Why All this Ayn Randiness?

      John Oliver on his “Last Week Tonight,” in a side chat about Paul Ryan inching away from the philosophy of Ayn Rand, put this contemporary…soap opera in perspective. “How is Ayn Rand still a thing?,” he asks, pleading with his viewers to revisit one more time the Big Ideas of Rand, at least before the next election. By the way, Oliver made clear that by using the word “thing” he was not objectifying women, and he wasn’t sneakily using a synecdoche or a part to describe the whole, as in “you poor thing.” Because I get most of my news these days from John Oliver and Jon Stewart, I agreed to reminisce about my first meeting with Ms.
      charles mccullagh4 min read

        My Ruby-Throated Hummingbird

        I love suburban animals. I don’t mind the deer coming through a couple of times a year picking me clean. I don’t even shoo the occasional…coyote. I’m even vaguely tolerant of the raccoon who shits on my roof on a regular basis. I’ve lost it a few times with the groundhog population. Years ago, when they started to chew on my farm porch stanchions and bathe in my well house, I had to eliminate a few. I used a single-shot .22 caliber rifle without a scope. I always fired a warning shot over their heads. These groundhogs, after all, were rural, untrained and lacking suburban survival skills.
        charles mccullagh3 min read
        Latest

        Under a Rainbow of Drugs

        I lived for a while in Brooklyn Heights across the East River and Lower Hudson Bay from Staten Island. I rarely looked at SI and never had…
        charles mccullagh4 min read

          Moments

          A poem
          Shira Lichtman1 min read

            Plumbing the Depths

            Tony the Plumber comes by when we need something manhandled, like a huge hole in a sewer pipe or a basement under water. His pre-work…
            charles mccullagh3 min read

              Incomplete

              An old wound has ruptured anew; festering uncontrollably.
              Sonia Rajput2 min read

                Disillusioned

                It’s morning. She looks up at the sun through half-closed eyes, soaking in in the dappled rays filtering through her eyelashes. She sees a…
                Antara Jha2 min read
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