Matthew Brady’s True Legacy
He did everything it took to get those photographs. If there was a particularly artistic patch of land that happened to have no bodies, he and his crew would move them into position before shooting.
Miss Bardolph, Pen-Slinger
When the seniors put on a homecoming skit and dressed up as the various teachers, the kid playing me had a pocket full of twenty or thirty pens to throw around at random.
Wait For It…
I sat back, dumbfounded, as these realizations came trickling in. I felt a little sheepish that it took so long for me to figure it out. God got a well-deserved slow clap.
To Ty and Lou
Later in the year, by then good friends, we learned that we had actually met much sooner, as naked toddlers in a bathtub. If I had known this earlier…
Beach Bah Humbugs
But if I’m being honest, I kind of hate the beach. If I must go to the beach in the summer, I prefer going before 9 a.m. or after 7 p.m. You know, with the runners or the couples.
Wisconsin’s Own Phox
I’m 24. I’m old now. I have a bedtime. I pay for health insurance. I drink hot tea to prevent kidney stones. But these tickets were free, and I liked the group, so why not?
That’s Where We Want to Go
I knew it as soon as I saw it on the map with all the little pins. This was the worst. Kokomo, Indiana. It’s basically Pawnee without Leslie Knope there to keep it afloat.
Burn
Reading what people would save and why is such an intimate peek into their lives that sometimes it even feels like prying. People bring photos of their wives and collars from dogs who have died.
Why We Wander
As a writer, I want to say I’m haunted by this question—why do we travel? In reality I’m not “haunted” by the why of travel so much as annoyed by its insistence on being answered.
The Wedding Dancer
Though self-conscious in the great majority of situations, I am a dedicated wedding dancer, so even at more subdued nuptials, I feel a sense of commitment to the boogie.
