Dispatch № 89: Not Giving Up

If it weren’t for the fact that I like the people I work with and I like the kids I teach, I’d have run for the hills a while ago.

Dispatch № 88: Oh, an Earthquake

I had no fear during that earthquake, and frankly never have in any that I’ve experienced. Which some people have told me is strange.

Dispatch № 87: A New Bath to Call Home

When we departed and walked home, I already knew I wanted to go back, soon and often.

Dispatch № 86: Falling Into Patterns

If I am still contentedly cooking her breakfast forty years from now, I’ll consider that a great personal success in a life well lived.

Dispatch № 85: Absent

A thick black line drawn through her name, as she would not be attending.

Dispatch № 84: Conditioning

Almost nobody gives them permission, let alone a push, to question authority or to push against the structures to which they find themselves subject but from which they rarely benefit.

Dispatch № 83: Bulging

The bag of plastic recycling comically large and overstuffed to bursting, like a farcical suitcase.

Dispatch № 82: Hidden Away

Plants are good at that, at keeping secrets subterranean and contained.

Dispatch № 81: Capsule Elegy

Few buildings ever manage to command such remarkable presence, and many that do lose their edge as the rest of architecture catches up around them.

Dispatch № 80: The Old Life

In the winter months, kerosene trucks drive slowly through neighborhoods in the evening, making their presence known with a repeating announcement played over a loudspeaker, accompanied by the tune of an old children’s song.