What I saw now was the community imperfect and irresolute but held together by the frayed and always fraying, incomplete and yet ever-holding bonds of the various sorts of affection. There had maybe never been anybody who had not been loved by somebody...It was a community always disappointed in itself, disappointed in its members, always trying to contain its divisions and … [Read more...]
Birthday wishes
It was a sunny morning in early October and the house was astir with activity. Katie and her grandmother Edna were busy slicing tomatoes at the kitchen table for dehydrating. Henry and Ryan were working on a plumbing project in the basement to re-route the kitchen waste water to a rain barrel outside. With the exuberance of an eight year old on her birthday, the small … [Read more...]
The garden school
It was the first day of school for Sakiko and six of the neighbor’s children. Katie stood behind a desk made of two file cabinets and an old solid core wood door covered in a table cloth. The blackboard behind her was as black as a winter’s night except for her name written in yellow chalk. Her students sat in mismatched office chairs around two dining room tables salvaged … [Read more...]