Miss Myler convinced me early in 5th grade that I was a slovenly girl. Before that year, I was confident in school, but when she called on me with her leaden voice I forgot facts I had carefully learned. I was labeled most lazy in class when we did our daily geography drills, the regurgitation of each state's exported products. Miss Myler praised students like Clarisa Widlow for being excellent. The rest of us didn't stand a chance, the struggling, unwashed, bumbling, or unsure.  READ MORE

Santa
by Lily Fong Endlich

In our Chinese household in North Beach in San Francisco during the mid-fifties, Christmas didn’t have much meaning until we children learned to sing Christmas carols at school and heard the stories of Baby Jesus born in a manger under the Star of Bethlehem, the three wise men visiting him and bringing gifts.

At the same time we heard of this fat dude dressed in red and white called Santa, who rode through the night skies in his sleigh pulled by flying reindeer, the lead reindeer with a red nose bright enough to light the way. Santa parked on the roof and entered the house by dropping down through the chimney.  READ MORE

Yankee Doodle Dandy Kid
by Allene Hickox

“Come on, Allene. Let’s go for a walk and see the troop train go by,” invited my Dad. At age six, I still wanted to please my Dad by doing what he asked. And a real troop train sounded exciting to me. Living as a child through the years of World War II held all sorts of new ideas.   READ MORE

Love Affair
by Carl Eggers

Just over one hundred years ago, in 1899, a guy by the name of Corbet S. Sheldon, signed what is now a faded yellow "maker" sticker and stuck it inside of the instrument that became my violin. Eighty-one years later I found her in Southern Oregon. I say her because there was a distinctive feminine quality about her, a richness, a warmth. On the back I see the squiggly grain of a rich maple wood and on the front, two slim black lines are drawn along the edges, elegantly complimenting her perfect shape, a classic beauty. This violin was silently calling out to me from a cluttered one car garage in a small Oregon town of Medford. I found her dusty, stringless, and forlorn looking. My first impression was that she was experiencing a deep depression from what must have been years, perhaps even decades, of neglect. Curiously, I sensed a preciousness beneath the tarnished surface and I felt an unexplainable excitement. I expressed a cautious interest and her unappreciative owner offered her to me for practically nothing. I took her "as is" because I intuitively knew that she and I could come to love each other.  READ MORE

The Thread
by Doreen Hamilton

Sounds of sirens....panic....intrusion
The invasion about to happen.

We protect ourselves and yet
There is danger all around.   READ MORE