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When I throw an email away, it goes in Trash, but my system also selects what it understands I do not want to see and puts it in another folder as Junk. Junk never appears in my Inbox. Periodically, I review the emails in that Junk folder, just in case something is misdirected. What I…
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I apologize to people who will see no point in reading this post. There is no point in reading this post. I have been trying to think of other things, to focus on the good I know is everywhere around, and to remember that I am a fortunate person. I am the oldest in my…
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Years ago, long before non-GMO became a common label on foods, before Safeway even had an “Organics” section, and before “gluten-free” became a thing, a junior came to class with an idea for her research paper. “It sounds interesting. They are altering the genes of food,” she said about the NPR broadcast she’d listened to…
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The student working on the research paper was well and truly stuck. He walked from the back table to where I sat at the front and asked me for help. “I am really far behind,” he said as if this were a permanent condition. He had the research. He had an idea of what he…
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When I prepared my application to the MFA (Masters of Fine Arts in fiction) at Pacific University, I needed a short story, a very brief literary analysis essay, and a personal statement. This was 2004. My mother had been dying for over two years, and my brother had declared me “the most disfunctional person” he…
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Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other. —Rainer Maria Rilke When my husband and I take our morning walk, we wander apart as much as we walk side by side. “I am going up to check that,” Gary will say, gesturing at something pink higher upshore. Yesterday morning…
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“It’s not funny,” my husband said after staring at the cartoon above. There is a nasty rumor I found on the Facebook page of someone trying to friend me. It claims Ford’s father was a CIA assassin. Seriously? This should be reported to Mulder immediately. And Scully. Today, I wanted to turn away from…
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The rape scene is explicit. I taught The Bluest Eye for 25 years. It is an extraordinary novel told from multiple perspectives. A little girl is ruined, driven insane and lost. The language is stunning, beautiful, masterful. I introduced the novel with an early event where a narrator describes being sick and feeling her…
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In our continuing effort to tidy the house, I am following an online series of articles on how to edit and tidy my home. Fifteen days of advice on how to eliminate clutter, and basically sort “stuff” into giveaway, toss, and keep-but-put-away. The process began by suggesting that I have a “monster pile” someplace in…
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When I was in high school, we told a joke: This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been an actual life you would have been told where to go and what to do. We can choose what we do with ourselves and we can choose to seek meaning. But we…
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IMPERFECT PATIENCE 