Blog

True Dawn

An essay by Stephanie Allen Crist. Today is Memorial Day in the United States. It’s a time to look back, and remember those who have sacrificed to make this country a place to be free. Instead, I look ahead and ask myself if it is freedom that I see. There’s something on the edge of thought—a feeling to be written of that isn’t quite ready to come out, not quite ready to be exposed. Frustration is there, and so is disappointment. All swirled together with a steady, flat kind of hope.

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Big Trucks and the Work that Needs Doing

An essay by Mark Stairwalt. Years ago, before the coming of the cell phone, I was the driver of a Freightliner FLD 120, an imposing, long-nosed boat of a semi tractor that crisscrossed the United States and parts of Canada with a 53-foot trailer in tow. Never mind that as a driver of a commercial vehicle one ends up memorizing the locations of countless truckstops, customers, scale houses, steep grades, and unlikely parking spots; what was truly impressive back then was that drivers would end up cataloging the locations of every accessible payphone along every route in every state we frequented.

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Thoughts from the Food Pantry

By mid-October, I found myself going to the local food pantry. The last time I’d been there was between the endless succession of jobs won and lost, when I couldn’t pinch another penny and the food money ran low. This time I was there because I wanted to volunteer. I’d always meant to do so, because I don’t like taking handouts; but the food pantry is open during the day and I usually had classes then, so I was limited to the church library and the cat shelter.

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My middle name

An essay by Melanie Yergeau. The map is new, and I know it all. I hop from one painted state to the next, reciting each capital, each state bird, each state nickname, each state flower, each state population as of 1989, the year imprinted on the spines of my World Book Encyclopedia set.

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Wrap Around Services and other urban myths

An essay by Maddy McEwen… if you’re very lucky, with a fair wind behind you, you may, and I repeat may, receive reimbursement… the insurance company writes to inform you that they wish to ensure that the therapy is working. To ensure that the therapy is working you must now have an additional evaluation done by each therapist for each child, which will not be reimbursed, to prove that they are indeed still autistic and still in need of services.

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Normal Is Just A Setting On A Washing Machine

An essay by Kate Goldfield: At recess, I would sit outside on the cold, hard ground reading a book. When I did bravely venture out to the playground to go on my beloved swings, it was never with a friend. I felt like I existed in a different world from all the kids around me.

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