Category: Essays

Whose Montana?

Two caveats as you approach this essay:  First, this might NOT be news to any of you.  I may be leagues late in seeing or feeling this divide between then and now. Second, I do know that Montana in…

Colors

I do it every year:  retool some part of my house—a wall from which I jettison current pictures and replace them with something more striking, more colorful. Or trade one set of tchotchkes on a particular…

Joy

“Live in joy even though you know all the facts.”  It’s been a hell of a new year already. Trump and his cohorts have invaded Venezuela, killed Renee Good, yanked elderly undressed men from their…

Ana #4 – Banana Bread

I am a legend in my own head for wasting bananas. I purchase them with some frequency, intending to be “good” and improve my diet. Then, when they start to brown and spot, I plop…

Blow-Up

Nothing says Christmas quite as succinctly as a yard full of deflated blow-up holiday characters.  A flaccid Santa tumbling over his stomach. Sprawl-legged reindeer still in harness.  Some unidentifiable characters like a Smurf-elf—a smelf—in a puddled mess.  A…

WHAT NOW!!!

I’ve pulled the kantha quilt up over the bed—quickly so as to keep Tuxedo from nesting in the sheets. Though the forecast called for a thick cloud cover and snow, there’s a bit of sun…

What Do I Know?

What do I know, really, of India?   That chefs, clad in sparkling white clothes and towering toques, came out often to greet us and ask how we found the food. That every driver who piloted…

Anas #3 – A Gift of Beauty

I’ve long since told you about my introduction to graduate school at the University of Oregon: deaf landlady, garret room with a naked lightbulb, one refrigerator shelf, reading assignments triple those that I’d experienced in college,…

It’s Complicated

My father, Paul Sherfy, died on February 24, 2002, at eighty-nine in the health-care wing of the Cedars Retirement Community—a Church of the Brethren facility in McPherson, Kansas.  I’d seen my dad several weeks before his…