A short story by Susanna Solomon

At seventeen, Christy St. Claire had been a virgin long enough. All of her friends had made it with guys, but she hadn’t, no, not yet. Having a boyfriend was a big deal for her, but that wasn’t the point, not really. It was this goddamn virginity, and it was in her way. It was time she joined the club.

Roberta Ann had told her she really wasn’t a woman until she’d lost it. Maybeth, in her history class, had lost hers in the back seat of a 1954 convertible, out…

by Jean Wong

I could no more procrastinate than bungee jump from a bridge. As children, we were taught that life was serious. “Fun” was tolerated as an incidental occurrence in everyday life, but had nothing to do with the main idea. “Study hard, make good grades, save money” was programmed into our minds like red banners emblazoned on a Communist party wall. No one had to remind us to do our homework. Work was the only course offered on the menu and each one of us dutifully proceeded to clean our plates.…

by Hannah Whitman

I feel the cold embrace
of these sullen shadows
thats all thats left of my reflection.
Reaching out to touch my face
I feel your cheeks are sallow
yet you’re still the picture of perfection

Hannah Whitman is 16 years old. She has loved writing short stories since she can remember, and as she grew, she started writing songs and poetry, also. She loves songs that make her “have to think long and hard” and that she…

by Cynthia Beecher

They switch places
To learn what the other knows

She usually leads
Her arrows ready
The gold dipped tips
Sharp and intuitive

It’s her turn to ride in back

He rides forward
Free to lead her
He can no longer say
I only went along

She never before saw his flowers turning into butterflies
Nor felt the breeze of wings
Never tasted the nectar drops carried by the flower Read the full article »

A Satire by Stefanie Freele

Ballpark, Michigan: Mary Martha Seaton, age 42, eight months pregnant and proud mother of seven, pushes one full grocery cart and tugs another through the “Bed and Bath’ aisle of her nearest Walmart, ten miles away from her home in Ballpark Michigan. “I’ll be so glad when they build the new Walmart two blocks from my home.” She wipes her brow and one of her baby’s cheeks with her sleeve. “Between you and me,” she whispers, “I have more money now than I know what to do with. I mean, how many trailers can…

From the moment we shared our first cup of coffee, my mother-in-law was my best friend. She’d call us and say to my husband, “You watch Daniel, and I’m going to fly Sharon up here for the weekend, so we can go to ‘Music Circus’.” These were a series of off-Broadway productions. She loved music, loved and she and I attended several together.

When she retired at age 75, we brought her to live with us – healthy and happy. We have a guest apartment down at the end of the hall and frequently, I’d be…

Universe: The 100th Essay

by Neil deGrasse Tyson

From Natural History Magazine, April 2007

“Of all the sciences cultivated by mankind, Astronomy is acknowledged to be, and undoubtedly is, the most sublime, the most interesting, and the most useful. For, by knowledge derived from this science, not only the bulk of the Earth is discovered . . . ; but our very faculties are enlarged with the grandeur of the ideas it conveys, our minds exalted above [their] low contracted prejudices.”

— James…

With the opening of the new Acropolis Museum, Greece has stepped up its efforts in the campaign to return the Parthenon Marbles – and rightly so. Following a visit four years ago to the British Museum, and viewing these artifacts and reading notes of “the head is on display in Athens,” or “the hands are on display in Austria,” really lit my fuse. To me, separating them in that manner was like dismembering a body. Sacrilege! The time is long overdue to bring these treasures back to their rightful home.

For years, the British contended that…

(From FEED ME, edited by Harriet Brown, Ballantine Books)

The diagnosis reached me on Mother’s Day of 1989: My sixty- six year old mother was suffering from an inoperable brain tumor. They told us she had only weeks to live.

Within twenty four hours, I had left my husband and our three young children to be at her side and take care of her at her home in Toronto. I didn’t say it out loud, but secretly I believed I might cure her. With my own strange, grief-crazed brand of magical thinking, I knew…

In my early days as an acquisitions editor for F+W Media, I found this quote by David M. Ogilvy:

“In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman.”

Up until the time I read this quote, I had primarily thought of myself as one of those creative-artistic stereotypes who disdained the numbers and focused on aesthetics, and “art for art’s sake.”

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