Five Absolutely Amazing Pieces You Will Love On Wednesday (Oct. 18)
Humanity and vulnerability, weathering hairstyles, the search for answers, raw grit, and "the mightiness of chloroplasts".
Friends,
We have five fire-hot pieces today. Stop the presses and start the engines.
Please remember that you can support these writers by reading their work and spreading the word. Thank you.
Ben
Patricia at Twisting the Myths takes us through the seasons in A Quick Tale: What happened to her hair? She writes of her protagonist:
A child of nature, Alyssa’s hair shifted with the seasons. For spring, it was a mixture of greens that grew more vibrant with each day. During the summer it was yellow like the sun. In the fall, it was a mixture of oranges and reds. And for winter, it was brown, almost as if she were hibernating with the trees.
There’s more to this short story, including a pinch of The Metamorphosis and a squeeze of Henry James’ unresolved tension.
Oh . . . and, as Patricia asks, what did Alyssa’s mom say at the end?
We know
at “Both Are True (BAT)”.He’s witty, encouraging, self-effacing in a “you-figure-out-what-guard-I-am-letting-down-buddy-cuz-I-ain’t-feeding-it-to-you” way, and has an ongoing feud with a Scottish snowman.
After reading My son, the two year old soccer prodigy earlier today, I wrote this in the Notes section:
As I get to read more of Alex’s work, I find a writer who is able to look at exuberance and angst and work to understand how both influence who he is, and how he hopes that his honest answers will inform how he shapes others.
Alex’s last two pieces have been amazing. His other—at face about standardized tests—is here.
I told
at “Jimmy Doom’s Roulette Wheel” I would have been satisfied reading just the first line of Curtains and Locks. It stopped me in my tracks. Little did I know where we were heading. A raw, gritty piece that intersects with compassion and fear. Great writing, great short fiction.
Notwithstanding its title, Vegan Earth is not about veganism in the dietary sense.
Rather, Rollie Atkinson applies brilliant insights and writing to a fundamental question:
[W]e know plants and amoebae and other living organisms had been living on Earth long before we got here. But how did plants evolve? How did any living thing evolve? How did a static sphere of burnt rock turn into a multiplex sphere of organic compounds and complex web of organisms?
He reminds us: “No plants, no you. No chlorophyll, no me. No photosynthesis, no future for any of us as we know it.”
Rollie writes in a style that draws the reader into the piece’s underlying science while still being understandable for us laypeople. I found it to be really interesting.
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Pamela, thank you so much. I hope you enjoy them. Looking for these pieces is a real treat.
I got a ton out of Amanda's piece (hesitate to say I enjoyed it exactly, but it was good).