East to West

Eleanor Roosevelt has one white rose on the desk she doesn’t use anymore, because she is dead. My mother and I sat in the reconstructed saloon of a German family. Her grandfather had taken his salooning skills all the way to Nebraska, others had stopped short of that. Others had lived in Germantown, in New […]

For/Fourth/Forth

I make positive protest posters. They say what I believe, what I want, rather than what I’m against. One of my signs was “Freedom from Fear,” copyright Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1941. I am for freedom, but not the freedom libertarians talk about, which is no freedom at all, the freedom to die alone and miserable […]

What is the Whale

We were given square canvases and teal and purple and white paint. I found the teal and the purple horrible. The teacher was going to guide people to paint a dandelion with its winged wishing seeds in the wind. We did not have to paint that. It took me a while to figure I wanted […]

The Office

When I worked downtown at my dad’s office, I saw my dad’s secret life. I saw that the people who worked for him thought he was fair, and solid, and a little crazy, all of which I knew was true. I was sixteen, and I did everything I could to show them I was a […]