All my life, I’ve believed that no matter how dark this world gets, there’s light behind that darkness, light that always shines through in the end. This belief has been fundamental to my writing, to the sometimes-dark stories I tell and to all the stories I tell. Terrible things happen. But light—something within humanity that generates light—finds […]
All Those Defiant Sparks Read More »
The trouble with talking about getting “back to normal” is that time doesn’t run backwards. It runs forwards. We can no more return to a pre-Covid world than we can return to typewriters or gas lamps or steam trains or diplomacy without the threat of nuclear weapons. The fact that Covid is likely to be
There is no “back to normal.” There’s only forward to whatever comes next. Read More »
Variants run freelyAround the world.Countries grapple with fatigue. New waves,Rising cases, Straining systems,Apathy. The virus pushes at us.We must push back. Found poetry from “WHO warns covid ‘nowhere near over’ as variants spike in U.S., Europe,” The Washington Post, July 13, 2022
Nowhere Near Over (a found poem) Read More »
I always thought personal responsibility meant not just taking responsibility for how your actions affect you, but also how your actions affect others. I mean, if you throw a ball and it breaks a window, you don’t just check whether any of the glass shards cut your own skin and then move on. You also
Hey, it’s me, the brave local mom who went viral for defying the city’s mask mandate last year. As you know, I suffered lots of persecution for that, including dirty looks from my fellow shoppers at the Grab and Go and that one cashier who snapped, “Lady, just take your Diet Coke and Twinkies and go!”
Infecting an Entire Elementary School with Covid Is My Personal Choice Read More »
The FDA approved a lower dose of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine for five to eleven-year-olds today. How do area kids feel about getting the jab? “It’s about f*cking time,” said Ava Phillips, age nine, speaking from the bedroom where she was waiting for the health department to lift the quarantine on her fourth-grade class … Read
Kids React to FDA Vaccine Approval: It’s About F*cking Time Read More »
As a new mother, I struggled with isolation and loneliness, as many new parents do. I was an older mom, and most of my friends were childless or had older kids. My new-parent schedule didn’t leave much time for seeing anyone whose day wasn’t structured around naptime and bedtime, and that was hard enough. Harder
For parents, the pandemic’s lesson is clear. We’re on our own. Read More »
Life isn’t a story. This is, for the most part, a good thing. Stories need conflict. Stories need drama. Stories need, more often than not, for the worst possible thing to happen at the worst possible time. No one wants to live in a well-written story. The pandemic isn’t a story. But if it were,
Life isn’t a story. That’s probably a good thing. Read More »
It’s been more than a year since I last believed in normal. A year since the ordinary spring afternoon when we left our jobs and our schools behind for the weekend, not understanding, yet, that on Monday we wouldn’t return. From the start, even as I settled in to remote learning and remote working, I
From Spring to Spring: A Pandemic Year Read More »
Can we take a moment to recognize the strength and resilience of elementary-school-aged kids during this pandemic? They’re putting on their masks and their backpacks and walking into school on their own every morning, even the littlest ones, whose parents couldn’t follow them on campus for their first day of kindergarten this year. They’re learning
Kids are awesome, pandemic edition Read More »