When I was 12 years old, my grandmother taught me how to make gum wrapper chains. It’s easy to do: you fold a candy wrapper into a rectangle with two flaps, fold it across the center, and thread another of the same through it. Do this enough times and you…

It’s been a long and warm autumn, but each day there are more signs that winter is on its way. Most of the leaves have fallen from the trees and formed hilly brown piles at the edge of the woods. My birds’ coop is filled with loose feathers — the…

For almost twenty years, I lived in Massachusetts, in an area nestled between the Berkshire Mountains and the Eastern Massachusetts ridge: The Pioneer Valley. My first two addresses were college dorm rooms. The next was a boxy one bedroom apartment, situated behind a small strip mall with a 7-eleven and…

I started publishing essays on Medium earlier this year, when everything in my life felt like it was falling apart. Originally my idea was to revive my old, abandoned humor blog, The Lower Crust, which I once used to write comedic reviews of Lifetime movies and pizza boxes. …

I’ve never been a dancer. At the age of six I dropped out of ballet lessons when the teacher unveiled our new, cringe inducing tutu costumes. Quitting was an easy decision — I never could remember the positions, anyway. I was 12 when I tried dance again, this time in…

The other day, I found myself thinking of this New-Year’s-themed piece, originally published way back in 2013 at The Farmer General. It’s been quite a while since we’ve been inside any kind of restaurant, and given the state of things it’s probably going to be a bit longer, at least…

We started out in 2020 with seven chickens, raised as chicks in two batches. The first batch included Jess Junior, Bella, Biscuit, and Eggo. Later on came Sally, Deceptigod, and Ostro. As you can tell, my niece and nephew named most of them. Cody and I are both researchers at…

I wrote this back in 2012 while grieving the loss of my grandmother, Alice. It was originally published at http://farmergeneral.com/ We had an electric griddle when I was a kid. It had a cast iron top with bright orange trim, and you plugged it into the wall. It was hefty…

After you have a miscarriage, you hear the word “luck” a lot. You’d think this would come from friends, maybe a priest. Surprisingly, it’s what the doctors tell you. “Just bad luck.” they say. Hearing a word one associates with rabbit’s foot keychains coming from disciples of capital-S Science… Well…