On an unseasonably cool night the Red Bike Restaurant is packed with patrons, for a local fundraiser auctioning creative and bizarrely decorated Wellies. Here in the Pacific Northwest, Wellington boots are considered formal wear. I expected good island entertainment. I did…
What's in your sack? the traveler, stooped from the heaviness, is asked. My Mother. Isn't she heavy? She sure is. Why don't you put her down? I can't. Well, why can't you stop carrying her? I don't know. I've always carried her. I know this: I,…
I learned a new word not long ago: Sankofa (in the Akan language of Ghana). It is often associated with the proverb, "Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi," which translates "It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten." It was scheduled…
Lia Lee died when she was 30 years old. Lia was the 14th of 15 children born to a Hmong refugee family. Lia is the first of the 15 born in a hospital (in Merced, California). Lia is born brain…
Once upon a time, a little boy loved a stuffed animal whose name was Old Rabbit. It was so old, in fact, that it was really an unstuffed animal; so old that even back then, with the little boy's brain still…
Two brothers, living on adjoining farms, fell into conflict. In forty years of farming side by side, sharing machinery, providing mutual support and assistance whenever needed, it is their first rift. But it doesn't take much, does it? (“I have…
It is Christmas. Which means that The Force Awakens is here. (For non-Star Wars fans, or anyone who has not been in the vicinity of any media for the past few months, this is the much-anticipated Episode VII.) Is it fair to say…
My grandmother -- Gladys Thelma Andrews... on her porch swing My grandmother--Southern Baptist born and bred--didn't cotton to folks in her church who played the judgmental-eternal-damnation- card just to feel good about themselves, or for the sake of proving a…
