When I was a toddler, my mom spent time in a hospital in Tampa. It would have been in the summer of 1971 or 72, right around the time of The Baker Act. I don't know if that had anything to do with her time in the hospital. I know that she tried to harm …
These are strange times. Everything I've thought to write seems beside the point. To say I dislike uncertainty seems silly. Few of us do. Some people say they do, but I tend think they mean uncertainty within reason. Some people shrug and say they've been working from home for years and nothing much has changed. …
This crossed my social media path this evening.
I've done almost nothing creative for days. I've either been working to switch my real life classes to online class or reading about COVID-19 or taking pictures of our dogs or looking at other people's pictures of dogs. Well, I did build lots of odd, random structures out of Legos. This is why I dreamed …
My dad once told me I only got headaches because I'd seen Tylenol advertised on TV. "I've never gotten a headache," he said, "and we didn't have a TV when I was a kid." To be sure, he said it like a joke. My dad says everything like a joke. I didn't see him take …
I spent a lot of time alone as a child. The first reason is that I was an only child. But some only children are surrounded by people, cousins, neighborhood children. I have lots of cousins but they all lived hundreds of miles away. I saw a few of them when they came to see …
My second October as a Peace Corps volunteer and my second month into a new relationship, I got sick. Very sick. I must've had the flu, but I never received a proper diagnosis. Bulgarian friends and coworkers said I had The Grip, which this website tells me is the flu. (I've written about this before, …
A couple of weeks ago at a Death Cafe, people talked about whether they were afraid of death and what it meant to live without that fear. I've been thinking about things people said. Keep in mind it's a room full of strangers trying to voice thoughtful perspectives on big questions in a short amount …
Have you seen a New Yorker article about the horrors of the birthday week? The author takes exception to people who celebrate their birthday for more than one day. It's narcissistic and self-obsessed. It's childish. Reading the article and several of the comments made me wonder about how some of us seem to live in …
October. The most magical month of the year. Here in the northern hemisphere summer is leaving and winter is coming. The cold wind takes the dead leaves and the candy industry rules the world. Horror movies splatter screens everywhere. Creepy, tacky, and macabre decorations spread over yards. People bemoan even thinking about costumes or they …
Marta Bacon 