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Living Alone

Sunbeams

We do not have too much intellect and too little soul, but too little precision in matters of the soul.

Robert Musil

Night Of Dying

I had known all week that Keith would die that weekend. I knew he wanted me there when he died, not at work, or waiting at a red light, or picking up bread or milk, or waiting in line at the bank. He waited for me.

The Attending Physician

These days, the label “attending” is attached to “physician” as a matter of course, obscuring the possibility that it might once have meant something beyond a job description.

Trees

New neighbors, the sack of Rome, a treehouse in the Cascade Mountains

The Nosebleed

When the children were small and woke with fear in the night, they came into our room and stood breathing quietly by the side of the bed, waiting. They never waited on Dan’s side, but always on mine.

Sunbeams

It is not your obligation to complete your work, but you are not at liberty to quit.

The Talmud

Bubble-Boggled

Of The Brave

Bob’s friend Ken was supposed to meet him at the Internationalist around nine that very night. But when Ken opened the creaky screen door, he found Bob sprawled on the floor, bleeding and unconscious. He’d been shot in the head. Ken called for an ambulance and the police, and Bob was rushed to the hospital, but he never regained consciousness. He died the following day.

Celebrating A Massacre

U.S. bomber pilots destroyed or incapacitated eighteen of Iraq’s twenty electrical power plants. The link between that and children dying today was explained by the Harvard team: “Without electricity, water cannot be purified, sewage cannot be treated, waterborne diseases flourish, and hospitals cannot cure treatable illnesses.”