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Kat Vellos, a queer writer, refers to our current social crisis as “post-pandemic platonic longing,” and I can’t recommend this book enough. After hunkering down for so many years and witnessing so many toxic relationships and emotional car wrecks daily via television and social media, this kind of reaction would make perfect sense. (I’m trying
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Not counting our dearest and oldest friends, and our newbie dearest friends, my husband and I have a much wider circle of new relationships in our life these days. Important and necessary professional acquaintances; new and blossoming professional relationships with potential to become friendship relationships; Zoom groupers and leaders of Zoom groups (in all the
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I used to teach a theme-based composition course on the farmers’ market and the homemade food Renaissance. Half of the required booklist is on the food manufacturing crisis; the other half poems and fiction on subjects like vegetables, flowers, nature, Adam and Eve. We watched documentaries on farming. Daily my students heard me rant on
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My husband and I have been preparing children’s clothing, toys, and furniture donations for local charities. Being on the phone with people who do this kind of work reminded me of how important it is to listen. In his groundbreaking book “Working,” Studs Terkel taught the world a lesson on empathy: Only when we ask
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I am honored and thrilled that my poem “Pollen: North Carolina” has been accepted for publication and will be included in the 2023 eEdition of http://PoeticaMagazine.com A heartfelt thanks and appreciation to Michal (Mitak) Mahgerefteh and poetry editors at Poetica Magazine. https://www.bennington.edu/mfa-writing/publication-news ☮️ #writingcommunity #poetrycommunity
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We live in the South, and it didn’t take long before we noticed how some performed Southern and class as a way to survive. Friends from out-of-state tell me it’s not just in the South anymore. I’m not talking about people from here who see me at political gatherings and cross the room to corner
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Here is the first story I told myself about a purchase I made one day: I must not have been paying attention when my personal shopper called me to inform me the grocery store was out of my preferred brand of white sugar. Could she give me a different brand that is in stock? The
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I worked at the Bookstop in Houston for a year before I started graduate school. My husband was a full-time CWP student and Comp Teacher at the University of Houston at the time. Nothing made me happier than helping customers find books they were looking for. In those days there were two data machines to access
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I once taught a course, “Tell Me You Didn’t Just Say That! The Snark, The Gossip, The Liar,” and the discussions and essays considered the rights and responsibilities of upholding free speech. This theme based comp class generated meaty conversations. I asked big questions: When we say that something is in bad taste, what exactly
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I am studying Hebrew. You’ve probably heard this before that becoming fluent in a language late in life is good for the brain’s neuroplasticity—the ability of the brain to form and reorganize synaptic connections, especially in response to learning. That’s why learning new languages comes naturally to children. While writing the above, this vivid memory
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Mary Louise Penaz 