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“I DON’T WANT to hear any woohoos. I want to see serious descending.”

He’d just climbed 300 feet over about three-quarters of a mile, and now we were over the crest and he was feeling the start of his reward, rolling T-right onto Spring Hill Road on his little 20″ kids’ bike and aiming it dead-center at gravity. 668 more words

It has been a while. As it turns out, minor league life is much busier than I remember from last year. My last entry was about 3 months ago! 1,598 more words

This morning I drove past a Burger King that was announcing via outside signage: “Now hiring smiling faces!” My usual response to seeing signs like this is to conjure up a mildly disturbing mental image of disembodied grinning visages rolling (how else would a disembodied face travel?) into Burger King and filling out job applications with…I don’t know what. 1,192 more words

As I’ve mentioned before, I come from a marketing background. It’s what gave me a basis for all my analytical work, and why I find the “business” side of hockey just as appealing as the “play” side of hockey – I’ve always been curious about how and why people spend their money. 1,781 more words

Humans are off to live on Mars. At least, that’s the case journalist Stephen Petranek makes in his TED Book, How We’ll Live on Mars… 42 more words

When my father’s father died a year ago, even though he was my first grandparent to pass, I wasn’t emotional. His was a slow slipping: first his professorial mind decayed, jumbling his memories and mixing the files in which he stored Shakespeare and Tennyson, then his body, which he refused to care for because he was too proud to admit he needed help. 764 more words

In 1857, less than two years before the publication of On the Origin of Species, Richard Owen delivered a lecture about gorillas. As Europe’s preeminent zoologist / public intellectual—a Carl Sagan of the Victorian era—Owen’s opinion carried a lot of weight. 2,565 more words

By Stephanie Eichberg

In 2012, a book appeared on the shelves of popular science that (re)acquainted the public with a medical revelation; namely that animals share with humans a wide range of acute and chronic diseases as well as psychological disorders, and that they can accordingly ‘teach us about being human’. 1,664 more words

Last September, I took a workshop at the Marshfield School of Weaving on dyeing with plants gathered from garden, field and forest. I headed up to Vermont right after quitting my job in publishing and could feel myself sliding into a different way of being. 402 more words

*This piece has been published with permission of the referenced ex-partner. Other relationships may have been slightly altered to protect specific identities.*

The first time I was sexually assaulted I must have been 9 or 10 years old. 1,352 more words

The opening sequence of Legally Blonde is all pink products and blond hair. We cut between scenes of college and sorority life – a girl being catcalled by frat guys as she bikes past their house, girls in pink workout gear on treadmills, those Tiffany’s heart bracelets everywhere – and Reese Witherspoon’s silky hair and perfectly manicured hands surrounded by beauty-products and markers of traditionally recognizable, material femininity: Herbal Essences “True Color” Blonde hair-dye; nail polishes; dried roses on a stack of… 1,863 more words

Not all who wander are lost.

The first place I drove when I got my license was the grocery store. I don’t know why, but all of those lined shelves in sections, labels out, helps remove stress. 860 more words

Menagerie Speeches

“I have just been to see Her Majesty
and I will form a majority menagerie.
I want to thank all those dear creatures… 249 more words

ONE MAN’S MUSE by Chris Holm

Larry Arsenault could’ve done without the voices.

It was bad enough he had no job. No girl. No favored hangout to haunt, nor any money to spend there if he did. 3,384 more words

As a poetry editor, the sheer amount of poems you read can be very daunting. When you read hundreds of poems, you begin to notice that there are a few topics everyone seems to want to write about. 577 more words

Life is too short to be content with commonplace ideas and philosophies society bombards us with. What use is being called Homo sapiens, “the thinking man,” if we refrain from using every bit of time we have left to enhance our meditating faculties? 985 more words

It’s happening again.

I read the diary written by Gwen Wells in which she records her courtship and marriage, the minutiae of life at work and play, the tumultuous final months of the Great War, and her experience of becoming seriously ill with influenza. 1,001 more words

(Left to Right: Alyson Hannigan , Philomena Kwao, Essie Golden, Tess Holliday)

For the typical size 18 girl like myself, the summer months bring along the ever complicated dilemma: wear longer clothes that cover up “problem areas” but threaten to cause heat stroke, or throw caution to the wind and go for the shorts and tank top that show every jiggle and bump. 1,482 more words

I don’t know about you all, but I’m getting rather bored of the I-love-my-hijab sentiments now. It means, unfortunately, you have to put up with my lengthy rants. 1,468 more words