As the pandemic recedes, I’ve got to decide what kind of life I actually want to live — When school let out for winter break of 2020, I finally started to lose my shit. It wasn’t the holidays, a possible election coup, my kids off Zoom school for a couple weeks, writing deadlines, managing my newsletter, or having to ready my online classes for a January 4 start…

A few thoughts on travel in 2023 — Photo by Michele Bigley It’s after 11pm in a Cairo airport hotel. The cafeteria’s packed. Women in a rainbow of hijabs and niqabs carry roasted chicken and kefta, rice, tahina and fruit from the buffet to husbands and children studying smartphones. A gaggle of drunken Russians in tank tops showing…

How simple actions offer personal gain — Before we were old enough to go to sleep away camp, my brother and I often spent our summer days in the hallway of my father’s accounting office. We’d watch Mr. Rogers slip on his cozy sweater as we huddled around the black and white three-inch TV my dad had…

Making Act 2 more than a sports car and a hot young thing — On the last day of winter quarter, my boss sent an email telling me I would not be rehired for the next academic year. I was shocked. This was my first year at this university. Though I wasn’t a great fit for the department’s rigidness, I was one of the…

Recently in a faculty meeting at my university, our academic integrity representative, I’ll call her T., said her biggest job is talking teachers down from the ledge. T. …

There are days when the doom doesn’t go away. Do you ever feel it? Like no meditating, healthy breakfast, dog cuddles or hugs seem to eclipse ALL THE THINGS. …

A year after the Glass Fire torched Bothe Napa Valley State Park, I returned. Though patches of green had already reappeared; little yellow flowers poked through tangles of branches, I had to actively focus on the regrowth rather than the scarred trees. Now two years since that devastating fire, I…

When my father-in-law found out he had terminal lung cancer, he asked for a party. At the time, Southern California was at its highest Coronavirus numbers. His fragile lungs were obviously immunocompromised, yet the threat was overruled by his desire to celebrate with all the people he loved most. Surrounded…

As children of Ohio’s Appalachian foothills, autumn was one of my greatest joys. My brother and I soared into the piles of fallen brown leaves. The crunchy cushion softening our falls. We’d jump up, laughing, “Again, again, again.” …