Category Archives: Featured Item
Open Wounds
She marched past me with purpose, not even noticing me, it seemed. I almost heard her heart break when she tried the door and found it locked. She turned back toward me and spoke for the first time. She had shimmering eyes. A quivering voice.
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Pop Joyride
Then the song opens up, like pulling the curtains on a dark room. As light pours in, everything changes. Guitars trade grit for tinkle; kick drum gives way to high-hat and splash; the bass lightens its step. And then the keyboard takes up its song, standing in for the vocals. A beautiful, light melody fills the newly-brightened space. For a moment, I'm the one kissing on a moonlit rooftop.
Fatherhood
Fatherhood is funny thing. It turns a man who is well-respected at work, considered to be intelligent by his colleagues and clever by his friends, into a complete idiot. I’m not a father yet, but I’m already beginning to see that mine isn’t nearly as stupid as he used to be.
My Binary Life
I can actually remember life before computers. My baby sister, who just turned seven, has never lived without one. She was a couple years old when she first crawled into the computer chair and started banging on the keyboard. By the time she was four she would announce that she needed to check her email; and then she would crawl into the computer chair and bang away on the keyboard.
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It’s Not There Anymore
I pushed the door open with both hands and sauntered to the soda counter. Sitting on an old high stool I gazed around and took in the shelves that ran floor to ceiling. They were packed solid with merchandise I barely recognized. Trinkets, games and toys lined the walls and even fell onto the floor; the smell of mildew stung the air and I felt as if I was trespassing time itself.
Hidden Child
Sonja Dubois is one of our last firsthand links to the Holocaust. She is a member of a generation of European Jews that has been called the Hidden Children. These young children were given up by their parents in hope that they would be able to survive, even if their parents did not. Many of the hidden children assumed new identities; most never saw their parents again.
Life-changing Chocolate
I don’t want to live in an ugly world; and though sometimes we humans revel and wallow in the ugliness we bring upon ourselves, we are capable of creating a great deal of beauty too. In the end, cynicism and bitterness must surrender to the kindness of a stranger’s smile, an unexpected helping hand at the grocery or a surprise offer to share a chocolate bar.
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Character Sketch
The strangest thing is, how you’ll come to be friends with me in the first place. You’ll think I am so clever and interesting. Because I can carry on a passable dinner conversation about Lear.
Rhein-Main Airfield, 1944
The three of them stood, waiting, at dawn;
pilot, cryptographer, guard,
watching cloudy, dull-red fingers extend
over earth.
Requiem