Henrietta: A Summer Love
by Joe Cottonwood

I do not claim to own this creek
but it flows through my property
and perhaps I own each day’s gurgle
that wakes me, and beds me, alone
after a winter of slow goodbye.

Today, a new sound: splash and thrash.
A salmon the size of an otter
struggles upstream over gravel,
pool to pool where she rests, gathers strength
for the next leap and spurt
driven by a memory she does not remember.

Nine miles from the Pacific she stops
at this dark pool under my footbridge.
In a drought year, no farther. Henrietta,
I christen thee after my favorite aunt
who has your face.

I do not claim to own this fish
but all summer she hovers in shadow,
fins barely moving, facing upstream.
Water enters, water departs
too shallow each way for escape.

At the post office I happen to…

Still Waiting
by Clive Collins

I’m still waiting for time’s tide to turn and run back towards the shore.
Still waiting for all the number 32 buses I ever missed to turn up all at once
like a flock of vanilla-flavoured ice-cream coloured seagulls.
I’m still waiting for the Stones to start singing “I Am Waiting” one more time and Ray Davies
to stop being so tired, so tired of waiting.
I’m still waiting for my father to come home after his funeral, for the telephone I no longer possess, the one with the circular dial, to ring-a-ling-a-ling and hear voices say “hello”.
as in “hello, it’s mam” or Meg or Ray or Mick or David or any of the now accumulating
directory of the dead.
I am still waiting to be less of everything I seem to be—shy, thick, anxious, to be electrified to the quick by—by what I…

Still Waters
by Paul Jones

I am still, waiting
for the one moment
that old Eastern sages
say gives absurdity
an absolute clarity,
the moment multiple
bald monks chant to induce.
They say the Way is
like water. It will work
its wonders at due time,
the way water always
breaks up rocks, turns them
into sand, but will not
be transformed itself.
Being water, it’s
already what it needs
to be. Winter and ice
merely redefine water.
Wind, when it works, only works
on the surface of water
When fire meets water,
water is sent to heaven
but fire just becomes ash.
Water, like saints, returns
to perform its steady work.
Sleet, snow, rain or hail—
even fog—are water’s
temporary bodies.
In time, water will be
all part of one huge sea.
Water will save us all
in time. In time, they say.
In the meantime, be water
as…

Readers expect academic writers to know what they are talking about. We meet that expectation by grounding our writing in good scholarship – and making it sound authoritative.

Authoritative. You can see the words author and authority contained within authoritative – and this is no accident as the threesome have the same origins. An authority is a knowledgeable person or source whose word is trustworthy, reliable, dependable, valid, sound, well-founded. An author is the one who writes confidently about what they know.

You may also see in this family of words the verb to authorise, to recognise expertise in some way. And of course the adjective authoritarian, and this points to the ways in which authors can overstep the mark – they dictate to readers rather than gently lead. I don’t want to digress into wordplay here, but it is helpful to see that an authoritative writer leads and guides…

Steven Singer, a teacher in Pennsylvania, explains what is most important to him in public education:

Diversity is the Most Important Reason to Save Public Schools

Public schools are under attack.

So what else is new?

It’s been so since the first moment the institution was suggested in this country  by revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson:

“Education is here placed among the articles of public care… a public institution can alone supply those sciences…”

And John Adams:

“The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it.”

But as the founders saw public education as primarily a means of securing democracy by creating informed citizens able to intelligently vote, that is only one of its many benefits today.

Compared to its main alternatives – charter, voucher, and private schools – public schools are more fiscally responsible, democratically controlled and…

Silver soldering
by Beth McDonough

File to sharp brightness on both sides,
then butt each seam hard at its twin.
Exert gentle pressure to make ends meet,
slick a flux brushful all the way down.
Stipple a little on a snipped-off strip,
real silver solder at the meet of the cut.
Bind it up in thin iron wires. Not that tight.

Build mini-firebrick homes in the forge,
set a nest of those same skinny wires.
All so unlike tin soldering…iron and glob;
this whole job must be warmed
to a dulled just-red, with a tad more
torch play of flame, now
roar it up the wait of the join.

There’s a moment of bubbling up borax,
strange colours and stinks.
However often you’ve done this, you think
what if this time nothing floods?
But it does. A glisten turns silvering river,
mercurial, healing. The job stopped,
tongs ready…and quench.

Arguably…

“Space City! was an underground newspaper published in Houston, Texas from June 5, 1969 to August 3, 1972. The founders were Students for a Democratic Society veterans and former members of the staff of the Austin, Texas, underground newspaper, The Rag, one of the earliest and most influential of the Sixties underground papers. The original editorial collective was composed of Thorne Dreyer, who had been the founding “funnel” of The Rag in 1966; Victoria Smith, a former reporter for the St. Paul Dispatch; community organizers Cam Duncan and Sue Mithun Duncan; and radical journalists Dennis Fitzgerald and Judy Gitlin Fitzgerald. Dreyer, a Houston native, and Smith had worked together at Liberation News Service (LNS) in New York before coming to Houston to help found Space City!. Other staffers included Bill Narum as Art Director, cartoonist Kerry Fitzgerald (later known as Kerry Awn), and noted…

Animal Crackers Day celebrates these ever-popular treats. Animal crackers first came to the United States in the late 1800s when the U.S. imported animal-shaped cookies from England. In 1902, animal crackers officially became known as Barnum’s Animals and evoked the familiar circus train theme of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. Later that year, Nabisco designed the now-familiar box with a string for the Christmas season to hang from the Christmas tree. They were a big hit in 1902 and still are today.

Christopher Morely (1890-1957) prolific American journalist, novelist, poet, and essayist. He also produced stage productions and gave college lectures. Known for his novels, Kitty Foyle, Parnassus on Wheels, and The Haunted Bookshop, as well as his poetry collections The Old Mandarin, and On Vimy Ridge, and his essay collection, Off the Deep End. He suffered a series of strokes in 1951, and died at age 66 in 1957.