By Seán Malone and John Sweetman Seán and I grew up on the beach and spent a lot of days just wandering aimlessly looking for edible or merely interesting sealife and valuable beach treasures, which our moms generally classified as “junk.” We had other diversions beside combing the beach. One was riding our bikes to…
By Daniel Hooker Recently a friend/acquaintance passed, Country Joe MacDonald, a Navy veteran honorably discharged who served from 1959-1962. Joe’s service to his countrymen/women continues through his gift called music. It has been documented in a film called “Woodstock” where between 400,000-600,000 “hippies / peacenicks” gathered to celebrate life, liberty, and not just the pursuit…
Part of a memoir By Suzanna Leigh Illustration by Suzanna Leigh It all came crashing down in early February. There was magic, living in the chicken coop on Maury Island. There were still a few cabbages in the big garden in December, when five year-old James and I moved in with Davey, Phil, and Phil’s…
By Steven Nourse If you’re reading this someday, it means I’ve finally joined that club I once thought only belonged to grandparents. Funny how life sneaks up on you. One minute you’re young and invincible, and next you’re standing on your porch at 78, realizing that a 50-year roof warranty is more of a joke…
About 155,000,000 United States citizens voted in the 2024 Presidential election. About 64% of eligibles! Millions & millions is an amazing number of our US citizen-neighbors: each somehow made the independent decision to vote for a person they never met for lunch, perhaps saw mostly on TV, heard some promises made by practiced politicians that…
By Michael Shook “… we all eat strawberries with cream – whether we like strawberries with cream, or not.” My mother had a number of sayings she was fond of, and this was a standard around the house, used when one of the three of us kids would whine about something not being fair. It…
It’s Been a Couple of Interesting Months Around the Old Johnson Farm By Pam (“Gates”) Johnson I’ve been slowly going out of my mind with inactivity since my spinal surgery in early December. A couple of friends are also going through some recovery. One had a shoulder replacement, another badly broke his leg. When the…
By Suzanna Leigh Marj Watkins – Illustration by Suzanna Leigh I dreamed about my mother early this morning. She is 101 now, and I see her about every other day. I watch her slow decline and wonder how long she will continue to enjoy life. Sometimes I dream that she is walking easily again, the…
By Seán C. Malone and John Sweetman I suppose Seán’s story of the “Turtle Rock” might have begun years ago when we both lived in the obscure eastern Washington town of Republic. I had been the mill manager of the Day Mines for a time. It had been one of the only gold mines…
By John Bean In “House of the Dead,” Fyodor Dostoevsky reveals his conviction that the quality of a civilization can be judged by how it treats its prisoners. If you believe in a strongman society ruled by force, then prisons might look like El Salvador’s notorious CECOT – a site for Kristi Noem’s appalling photo-op in front…