Bellyaching

I’m a champion complainer now. A gold medal bitcher. It surprises me, too. My work had arranged for me to travel to California’s Napa Valley to attend a conference. When I first heard about it, I was thrilled. But then complaints surfaced. I wanted to take a friend, but couldn’t figure out how to make […]

A Basket of Clams

“The primary organs of the immune system [is] the thymus, a soft, pinkish-gray triangular gland above our heart. (It resembles a thyme leaf, hence its name.). It is one of the few organs that grows smaller after puberty, the point at which many of our immune cells have been made…. “When our adaptive immune cells […]

Shape

I need to be corrected distantly, to know my door from the wall, and closely, to know my own hands, and the whiteness of the price tag paper from the ink of the $7.95, which is too much to pay for paint, lo though the shop is cool like a cave and slaves were chained […]

Unbearably On The Nose But True Symbol Story

I raised these butterflies, if by “raised” you mean paid for them, and carried them processionally around the arc of desks in my classroom, so each student could see them. See? Mariposa. Mariposa. (For the Spanish speakers.) Then I had seven painted lady butterflies in a cylindrical mesh cage. Honestly I was surprised they became […]