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The Good End of Pleasant Street

When our landlords came by to introduce themselves, they stood beside a shelf of our books on how to avoid suffering: “Develop a mind that clings to nothing,” said the Buddhist Diamond Sutra; Be Here Now, read the spine of a Ram Dass book. Dan was a general contractor and wore a flat cap and a half grin. Or a sneer. I wasn’t sure which.

My Bowstring Heart

On the field I was all animal instinct and brute force—a bruiser, a bone breaker. Every tackle was a rebuke against a life where fathers die. When I played rugby, I wasn’t a broke, lost little girl. I wasn’t a struggling amateur writer. I had goals. I was a winner. I was MVP. I was someone.

Practice Losing Everything

I challenged my students to interrogate their own religious inheritance, and I spoke frequently of the “ethics of faith.” I asked whether they’d arrived at faith through honest inquiry or by suppressing their doubts.

The Coast of Nowhere II

Sleet and black rain / pelting the eaves, the kind of predawn / that reaches through the window, hissing, / Your heart never was a bird let alone / a bright-red singing one.

Eating Free

Perhaps this isn’t the case at all Embassy Suites, but in Flagstaff, Arizona, between 5 and 7 pm, the hotel provides unlimited snacks and beer, gratis. I’ll repeat that: unlimited. Granted, I never imbibed more than three Michelobs and a cubic yard of Chex mix, but still. The possibility of unlimited is delectable.

The Fourth Estate

Sheila Coronel on the Future of News Media

I don’t believe we’re confined to the media business models that we know. As the information landscape evolves, there will still be journalism about what is happening now, and that will help people in the future who are trying to make sense of it. This work has value.

Sunbeams

The press must be free. It has always been so, and much evil has been corrected by it. If government finds itself annoyed by it, let it examine its own conduct, and it will find the cause.

Thomas Erskine

The Danish

Then I felt a small admiration for the Man With The Danish, who hoped to give away excess food rather than throw it in the trash. Maybe I should have accepted the Danish, although I didn’t want it. By turning it down resentfully, I might have discouraged him from ever offering food to a stranger again. But there’s no time to think when someone thrusts a sudden dessert in your face.

The Body Eats

I want to keep eating. I want life. More life. I want to turn from the simple facts of my existence to consider bigger mysteries, to fret about what might be, to remember what is no more. I want to imagine something other than this food in front of me, already a commodity on some assembly line, moving away from me.