You can now find me on Substack and Medium . I'll be keeping this blog up to look back and see my old work. It's been one hell of a year. I want to end it by starting this space. Something new. Something uncensored. I am a columnist for a rural paper in Ohio, an author who published her book in a pandemic summer, and a frustrated poet. I'm glad you're here. But don't come back if you can't handle some spicy words. See you 2020, let's do something new. Here are eight pieces I'm particularly proud to have written in 2020: It's only a virus, they said Taking a knee for an injured world Inconvenience in the time of pandemic 10 Commandments for tackling racism Redifining the word 'freedom' Spiraling down the conspiratorial rabbit hole A distraction to what ails us is never the cure Faith over fear is nothing if we're not wise
Have you ever been told that you're just not doing it right? "IT" could be anything. They way you cook something, clean something, build something. We've somehow been led to believe that the way we do things here in Holmes County are the ONLY way to do something. I can't even count how many times someone told George he wasn't doing something right. I try to fathom in my mind why someone would feel led to tell a grown man something like that. Is it because he's doing it differently? Or just differently than WE are doing it? Maybe because he comes from another country he IS doing it differently. Wow -- I just answered my own question. Let's take for example raising children. In Mexico, most kids do not have their own room. They share bedrooms and often times share beds. They think nothing of it. When Belle was little I would repeat the oft-used American saying of, "She just needs some alone time" . I would say this when she was
The Bargain Hunter , where my column appears, is undergoing website changes. For now, my columns will be posted here: There’s grace somewhere in the octaves between high-pitched and emergency, where I could hear the timbre of my voice and know that I was one step away from madness. This chaos lies in the line of crooked bangs cut with a dull hair scissors, no longer able to brush them away from the brown eyes of a child you love with such fierceness and agony. She would look at me, taunting, hugging me before she ran from me to do the things that would make my throat quiver. She would get up from her bed twenty-nine times in an evening, her Aladdin nightgown swinging as she descended from the stairs, and nothing I did would make her stay. There’s grace allowed somewhere in that madness. I remember rocking my baby in a rocker that several of our family had bought us for our wedding. The curves of it embraced us, and the nursery was warm with forced air from the furnace. I
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