Posts Tagged ‘Sara Zarr’
Moving Day
September 15, 2011
In my Father’s house are many mansions. Also, there’s a pretty neat treehouse out in the yard. I built it myself. I don’t have a lot of DIY skills and it shows. It’s made mostly of pieces I’ve scavenged here and there: driftwood, planks “borrowed” from nearby yards, and, frankly, a few remnants better left…
Read MoreDefragging at Glen West
August 25, 2011
I’m a Mac user now, but back when I had PCs, I would occasionally run a utility called “disk defragmenter.” You’d click some options and after several grinding minutes you’d get a message like, “Your disk is 46% fragmented. Defragment?” I doubt anyone really understood what it did. It was just something to try when…
Read MoreDefragging at Glen West
August 25, 2011
I’m a Mac user now, but back when I had PCs, I would occasionally run a utility called “disk defragmenter.” You’d click some options and after several grinding minutes you’d get a message like, “Your disk is 46% fragmented. Defragment?” I doubt anyone really understood what it did. It was just something to try when…
Read MoreThe Things You Know
August 9, 2011
As of August 18th, my husband and I will have been married twenty-one years, and have known each other for a total of twenty-four. It’s easy to believe after all of that time that I know everything there is to know about him. There’s something wonderful about that, the comfort and ease and shorthand that…
Read MoreGetting Over My Nature-phobia
July 19, 2011
I grew up in an apartment in the city. Through my formative years, my environment was made mostly of cement, yardless buildings, narrow alleyways, laundromats, buses, storefronts, and house cats. We did live a few blocks from Golden Gate Park, but it’s not the kind of park where you can go so deep in that…
Read MoreHope: It’s Not Just for Kids
June 29, 2011
A recent article (opinion piece, really, though not presented as such) in the Wall Street Journal asked the question, “Is contemporary young adult fiction too dark?” Well, it didn’t so much ask it as answer it. In writer Meghan Cox Gurdon’s opinion: Yes. The essential complaint Gurdon has is with the dark subject matter of…
Read MoreMarried, No Children
May 18, 2011
As I write this, Mother’s Day is nearly upon us. It can be a painful day for some women who are my age or older, and, like me, childless. For me, the day doesn’t arouse any emotion other than regret that once again I’ve failed to get a card for my mom. My husband and…
Read MoreMeeting the Boulder
March 2, 2011
As soon as I settled into my theater seat to watch 127 Hours, I felt uneasy. Why had I decided to spend the next ninety minutes of my afternoon watching what I knew would be a story of one person, virtually alone, in a desperate struggle for life? It’s not like I didn’t know how…
Read MoreThe Prosperity of the City
December 29, 2010
When my husband and I moved from San Francisco to Salt Lake City, we told ourselves and our appalled friends that we’d give it two years. Two years to ascertain whether we could survive summer heat, winter snow, being inland, minimal sources of good Chinese food, and a total absence of Mission-style burritos. And what…
Read MoreA Prayer for my Father
December 7, 2010
It’s Thanksgiving evening, 2005. And even though this is your last chance to see us, you can barely look. But this is nothing unusual. You’ve always had trouble seeing us, your daughters who, in spite of you, are here. The hospital is deserted, as if no one else in the city is dying today. Instead,…
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