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| Redefined Wheat
Roxanne B. Sukol
© Copyright
2008 by Roxanne B. Sukol
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My husband took over the grocery shopping the week that I started medical school. He was game; I was grateful. It was an interesting case of organisms adapting to a changed environment. In my husband’s case, it was as if he were harkening to an ancient call, a sacred hunt to sustain his family. Was there some connection between bagging groceries and bagging a deer? Not to me, but he didn’t care that it was the closest he would ever get to unloading a buck from the trunk of his SUV. What he relished was the unpredictability. Like a hunter, you never knew exactly what he was going to bring home. New condiments began to arrive every week. We started medical school with two children, and finished with three. “How does she do it?” asked the ladies at the nursing home where my husband worked. “Me,” he replied, “that’s how she does it!” In those years, the primary goal of most days was to get to the next one. Daily sacrifices were made, it seemed, to a pair of pagan gods who went by the names Acquiescence and Convenience. Our young children, after a few weeks of condiment sampling, began to consider barbecue sauce its own basic food group. From my perspective, drowning in a fog of facts and sleep deprivation, that seemed reasonable enough. From my husband’s perspective, that seemed reason enough to buy more. Years flew, kids grew, and the barbecue sauce just stuck around. On a routine evening ten years later, the after-dinner activities consisted of rinsing gobs of barbecue sauce from plates, scrubbing it off the walls of the microwave, and adding it to the shopping list. I made a mental note to stop at the supermarket the next day....
Sounds like a conflict coming up...Let's listen in!
| He Has Gone
Margie Hofman
© Copyright
2008 by Margie Hofman
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| Polebrook and
The Death of a Flying Fortress Wally Hoffman
© Copyright
2008 by Wally Hoffman
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Polebrook
The picture is the Memorial to the memory of the 6,000 members of the 351st Bomb Group who dedicated their lives and time from 1943 to 1945 during WW II. The monument is fittingly located at the end of what had been the main runway now silent from the roar and thunder of the Flying Fortresses so many years ago....
| Magnificent Maggie
Patti Iverson
© Copyright
2008 by Patti Iverson
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“Maggie! Get down from the top of the refrigerator right now!”
“Now where is that little imp? Oh? You found her in the baptistery?”
“Please don’t kick my baby out of the nursery. She’s not even two....”
| Paper Moons
Jerry Vilhotti
© Copyright 2008 by Jerry Vilhotti
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The whole family joined, like a knot in the stomach, that morning: the morning of Thanksforthegiving; also known as turkey day in honor of the women-plowing founding father who truly believed in a somewhat democracy.
Papa watched his eldest grandson intently ready to capture a throwing arm in mid-air or to use a mighty stare to paralyze the six year old boy's movements.
Mama stayed in the kitchen as the large fist of people jabbed their way into the parlor as she put her two hands to her head while looking up to the ceiling....
Yum, Yum...Dig in for More...
| Tales of Only-ness
Stacey Small
© Copyright
2008 by Stacey Small
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I should have had a brother. An older brother—maybe by eight or nine years. A brother who, whether he liked it or not, would become the object of my parents’ affection for many moons before the thought of conceiving me (whilst surrounded by the croons of Bob Marley and the Whalers) had even crossed into their heads. This brother of mine would be the apple of their eyes, the spring in their steps, and other bullshit phrases alike. My brother would grow big and my brother would grow strong. He would burst out of his baby clothes with skyrocketing measurements, proving that he would be the All-American Child (despite such handicaps as my father being 5’5 and having ‘Small’ for a last name)....
| Fraternity and Neruda at Lake Llanquihue: One Day in
Chile
Rich Conley
© Copyright 2008 by Rich Conley
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Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,
I cannot settle on a single one.
They are lost to me under the cover of clothing
They have departed for another city.
-from We Are Many- Pablo Neruda (Chilean poet, 1904-1973)
Lake Llanquihue is like any other lake at first glance yet events occurred during one day in my life that subsequently changed or should I say, enhanced my life perspective quite dramatically. My sole reason for visiting Chile was to briefly experience the essence of a country called The Land of the Poets. Poetry and its residing beauty came late to me in life and Pablo Neruda was one of the handful of poets who accompanied me wherever I traveled. How fitting that I would start my trip in The Land of the Poets in Temuco, the northernmost town in the lake region, the site of Neruda’s childhood. I traveled with Neruda’s poems by my side every day, reciting aloud the lyrical verses of times past as I breathed in the power of the lake’s surreal essence. Neruda’s words accompany this article for I would be remiss if my memory of that day was retold without Neruda’s abiding spirit. After all, his poems formed a central part of that unforgettable day. The reader may ask why an article on only one day in Chile yet the day, with all its unpredictable moments, seemed to expand and engulf me in a broader context....
| The Mission
Eric Roman From his experiences in Chiclayo, Peru, during
© Copyright 2007 by Eric Roman Eric was the winner of the 2007 Travel Story Award
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My sides hurt and my throat burned. It had been a long time since I had actually gotten physically sick and so I was resting, eyes closed with my hands on my knees, ready, just in case I had to be sick again. I began to be aware of the sweat on the palms of my hands and was glad for the tile floor cooling my shoeless feet. Then my eyes snapped open and I caught site of myself in the mirror when the meaning of the words from the alarmed voice on the other side of the door were processed by my sluggish brain. “Dad, are you OK?” I forced myself to smile, because it always sounds better if you are actually smiling. “I’m fine”, my way too chipper voice responded. “Be out in a second.” But I wasn’t really fine. In that “second”, I became the dad, the husband and the suburbanite who was working too hard at a job, wondering when the next service on the minivan in the driveway would be needed and if a load of “whites” had to be done before Monday. “This has to end” I whispered to myself. I had to finish what I started. That’s what I’m doing now.
I washed the bad taste out of my mouth and splashed cool water on my face. I opened the door to my real life, the life of today. But just a few moments ago I was back there. Four thousand miles and twenty years away, as if the time between then and now didn’t exist.
Just then, a moment ago, twenty years ago, I was 17 years-old and it had been almost two weeks since I left the City of Chiclayo, situated in Peru’s northwestern desert. I was exploring the country with a few other exchange students and some “chaperones” who were maybe five or six years older than us and were Peruvians that had been exchange students in the U.S. Some of the kids on the trip were Americans like me. Three were from Australia. One was from Austria and one was from Finland. Kai, from Finland was my best friend among the group. I knew him the best, since he had also been staying in Chiclayo before our trip. The others were staying with families from all over Peru, and I knew some of them from my short stay in Lima where we had trained before departing to live with host families. The kids at our high school in Chiclayo called Kai “popsicle” because his hair was as white as snow and his skin was so pale that you could almost see through it, like a piece of ice. He never seemed to mind, chalking it up as a kind of status symbol. He was different on the outside, but he told me that if he did nothing else in Peru, he wanted other people to learn that he was the same on the inside as everyone else....
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