nonfiction
by Mary Ellen Johnson The Firefly Story Hour, a part of the Georgia ForestWatch Fall Retreat, October 10, 2020, guided by Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, is a virtual storytelling session around a virtual campfire, 3-4-minute stories around the theme of CHANGE. Epiphanies relating to Nature began for me in my …
by B. Joan Gordon Life in the village has a static rhythm that assures one that all is well in the world, and if that changes, neighbors will help you. The sun rises before 6:00 A.M. and is announced by pigeons cooing to each other. Soon sugary smells stream through the bakery door onto the …
by Valerie Millar It was a clear, cloudless night in the late summer evening of 1974. Our parents had gone out to dinner and our sister, had a date with her boyfriend, leaving my younger brother, 11 years old, and I, 14 years old, home alone. David, my brother, was in his bedroom and I …
by Mary Ellen Johnson (if you don’t even know what clotheslines are, better skip this) There is one thing that’s left out. We had a long wooden pole (clothes pole) that was used to push the clotheslines up so that longer items (sheets/pants/etc.) didn’t brush the ground and get dirty. And now a POEM… A …
by Vivian Sheperis You remember what it was like, being four feet tall, looking into the mirror, wanting to see?…Is that me? You squint and lean closer to your five-year-old face: two eyes, two ears, a mouth, a nose. Tilting your head backwards, you peer up the nostrils into those black holes. Two pinky fingers …
by Mary Ellen Johnson My life stretches on its long course as the elongated circles are stretched on a carpet design. Youth A Florida girl digs her unmanicured toes in the dribbling, wet sand on the crowded, living, breathing, undulating coquina-filled world, accompanied by her 5 younger siblings, but in her own world, the world …
by Vivian Sheperis After that day I never played with dolls again. It happened in my tenth year on the seventh step in the middle of my fantasy, halfway up the attic staircase. A baby doll lay on each of the steps. The staircase hugged the right side of the parlor wall. It was guarded …
by Mary Ellen Johnson “I can only see 2 inches of height from y kitty vantage point under the living room couch. That foot just to my right looks enticing: Can I grab that heel with my claws, sharpened just a few minutes ago on my scratching post? They don’t call me Audrey from Little …
by Valerie Millar It was week six, of a twelve-week course in February 1992 at the “Northeastern School of Ferriery.” With 27 students, only four of which were female, this journey became more than just an educational adventure for me, on this day it became a life or death reality. We unloaded from the modified …
