I don’t know who came up with the idea; probably some urban hipster. Figure out those goods and services you need to survive, ditch your car, and then see how far you have to walk to arrive at those places that meet your basic needs. Put it all together, divide by the unsquare root of…

Dear Readers of Good Letters: Last year I took the opportunity on Thanksgiving day to thank you for reading Image journal’s “Good Letters” blog. It’s been another amazing year as our team of bloggers continues to produce moving, enlightening, and lovingly-crafted prose. The number of those who subscribe to this feed has more than doubled…

Year after year my mother’s birthday coincides with Thanksgiving, falling just before, after, or right on the holiday. And though it would be ridiculous to ascribe anything but chance to the calendrical synchronicity, there is something so fitting about this timing—what better time for family and friends to give thanks for a woman whose life…

One of my earliest memories is of the bookcase in the second floor hallway of my grandparent’s house falling on top of me. I had been climbing it trying to reach a book on the top shelf when it toppled. I remember lying there, stunned, the weight of the books and their cold, sharp corners…

I want a bigger house. When we moved to our little cottage 18 months ago, it seemed perfect for a family of three. We didn’t think another baby was on the way, and anyway, an imagined baby and his paraphernalia took up a lot less space. Now that he’s a reality, our two bedrooms, one…

The following was delivered at the Image Seminar in Charleston, SC, on November 6, 2010. The theme of the event, which featured novelist Bret Lott, was “Risking the Heart: Telling True Stories in an Age of Irony.” Confessionals have always fascinated me: the photo-booth dimensions, the heavy red drapes or wooden doors; the imagined intimacy…

Now that the time change has taken place, the season of fall has finally settled in, and buckled down. The weeks are barreling past now, downhill, bearing their inevitable way toward Thanksgiving and the grey months of winter. Here in Washington, DC, the tourists are gone and the ducks have flown away. More than anything…

I’ve never liked the fall. Beautiful as it is, it’s too nostalgic for me, too fraught with endings, reminiscences, and bittersweet goodbyes. The only unequivocal joy about the season is football, and that’s not enough to make me change my mind. Because fall means winter is coming, and I can’t stand the cold. So spring…

No doubt it was one of the more truly mortifying episodes I have ever experienced. Right up there with the time my freshman year in college when, alone at a table in the quiet library, I thought I had successfully suppressed a particularly insistent bout of dorm-food gas; but so strained was the effort that…

Reading, as a means of entertainment, is gloriously and tragically solitary. Think about it. Watching a television show or a movie or a ball game is often done with others, preferably with snacks. Maybe your friends meet up each week to cheer their favorite contestant on Top Chef. Or you catch the new Indiana Jones…