I couldn’t find the Works of Charles Dickens. I have been trying to learn to read again, lately. Reading used to be my defining characteristic. I was the shy and lonely child who disappeared into books. Growing up in Columbus, I lived two blocks from the Whetstone branch library, and we went there almost daily. I’d get a stack of chapter books from the library and mow through them before it was time to go again. When I was... Read more
The first thing I have to be absolutely clear about, as a Christian, is that God will judge us by the way we treat immigrants. There are very few things about which we can truly say “the Bible is clear” and not end up with a debate. But the Bible is clear on immigrants. The Bible clearly states, “‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as... Read more
The calm after the storm is more difficult than the storm itself. When I’m running around trying to help a family in a terrible situation, I don’t have time to think about how terrible it is. After it’s over– when I’ve failed to rescue anyone, but I’ve done everything I can, and life goes on– that’s when I start to feel it fully. I am much healthier than I used to be. I’ve grown up a lot from when my... Read more
(A caution to my more sensitive readers: this story involves an injured animal, and a gun.) The rain came back. The heat wave ended– not in fire, not in ice, but in steam. The temperature dropped from ninety-five with a heat index in the three digits, to the high eighties and rainy every few hours. The rain made the earth simmer like a pot of rice. In between rains, Adrienne and I went outside. I pulled weeds, and she played... Read more
This isn’t a good story; just a true one. A good story has a good ending. I’m not sure how this one ends, and I may never know. I haven’t seen the children I’ve referred to as the Artful Dodgers since last Friday. Friday, at ten in the morning, just as the catastrophic climate heat dome began to settle over the Ohio Valley, the five-year-old I call The Mandrake came up to the door by herself. She asked for... Read more
Hi friends! This is not a real post, this is just my every-several-months blogkeeping notes, explaining what I’ve been up to and where to find me when you’re not reading Patheos. This spring, the Pezzulos had an uncanny Easter. We got to organize the world’s least organized Easter egg hunt. I saved a baby bird and found myself the adoptive mother of a traumatized cat. We planted the garden. With the new/old car I’ve been swimming and visiting historic sites. And... Read more
The rain finally stopped. We’ll be without it for several days now. The abnormally cold spring ended. The morning of the summer solstice dawned bright and steamy hot. The five-year-old girl I call The Mandrake came to the door before noon, wearing next to nothing, asking for a popsicle to cool down. Later, I drove the grandmother of the Baker Street Irregulars downtown to the Juneteenth festival, with her disabled girl in tow. The grandmother was fretting, because the... Read more
There was a bit of a tempest last weekend. I’m known for my candor, when I speak about myself. But I am very careful to respect the privacy of the children in the neighborhood, and my own child. That’s why I give the children fanciful names, and I don’t describe their appearance very often. When they tell me their stories, and I write what they say, I change identifying details for safety’s sake. Trust me when I tell you,... Read more
Mountains Older than Bones On Wednesday, we went to Moundsville. “Going to Moundsville” is a slang term for going to jail around the Valley, because they have a historic state prison that’s now a museum. There is an electric chair name Old Sparky, and other things I never want to see, on display for fifteen dollars. But Moundsville also has an ancient Adena burial mound, the grave of at least three prehistoric humans, a much bigger mound than the... Read more
At the end of the world, I went swimming. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about what was going on around me. But I couldn’t think of anything I could do about any of it just that afternoon, so I turned off the computer and put my phone in my purse. I dropped Michael off at work, and Adrienne and I went to the beach, to go swimming. When you live in Northern Appalachia, “going to the beach” means... Read more
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