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Articles by Marlene Olin
Alligator Alcatraz, by Marlene Olin
Photo of Alligator Alcatraz by Felix Mizioznikov / Stock.adobe.com In this braided essay, a writer in Florida recounts her trip to protest Alligator Alcatraz while reflecting on her Jewish family’s history of persecution by the Nazis. On Sundays, protesters hold an interfaith vigil across the street from Alligator Alcatraz. Located deep inside the Everglades, the detention center houses immigrants awaiting deportation. When our synagogue was invited, my husband and I didn’t hesitate to go.
When the Door Was Open, by Angela Townsend
Angela Townsend recounts her own childhood fascination with politicians, embracing the clarity of a child’s innocent mind in its encounter with American politics. I assumed every little girl loved politicians. My grandmother could not convince me to play with baby dolls with eyes that never close. My teachers at the Little Red School House couldn’t talk me into climbing the big slide. But when the County Executive came to our house, I thanked God and all the fairies in the forest.
The Squirrel at the Monastery, by Lana Spendl
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. How do we look to her when she halts outside the window—paws spread, ears alert, tail stiff with hair in all directions—as we sit on the gompa floor, opening the tin from Costco and passing the cookies around? She cannot smell the spicy tea we sip, its warmth wafting over our cheeks and noses. Cinnamon, clove. The creaminess of half-and-half. Our mugs mere white blocks that rise to our faces and come back down.
Strange Scrawls, by Connor Lee McLean
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. Reading a secondhand copy of Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine, a reader encounters another consciousness in the margins. I’d like to say that I stumbled upon this book on a rainy night as it lay alone in the gutter, but the truth is that a regrettable ex pawned off this paperback like another pretentious thing to eventually jettison.
Things the Puppy Eats, by Marlene Olin
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. We each safeguard our possessions. Michael buries his pens inside a drawer. Rachel hides her purse. On tiptoes, I lay my watch on the highest shelf. Things the puppy eats: Sanitary pads toilet paper hairbrushes hair combs soap scum shower caps Chair legs sofa skirts cabinet pulls New books perused books Pencils newspapers New Yorkers Throw pillows! Yum! A ham sandwich snatched from a plate. He’s not our first puppy.
What Are You Doing Here?, by Gerard McKeown
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. In this creative nonfiction from London, a question once asked suspiciously becomes a question a man asks himself as a way of checking in. The first memory I have of this question is when, as a child, my family had run out of food. Even now, I don’t know the circumstances surrounding this. I’ve never asked my parents, partly because it would embarrass them. They might deny it ever happened.
Old Cars, by Marlene Olin
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. A late winter storm and a decaying Chevy suburban underscore the emerging fragilities of life in their seventies for a writer and her husband. We bought the Suburban in 1993 when we built our cabin in Wyoming. We summer here. Instead of sweltering in Miami, we escape the heat. I’m not an outdoorsy person. While my husband hikes and fishes, I read and I write. We’ve all aged the last three decades.
Landlines, by Marlene Olin
Family news still travels, but not as it once did, when families huddled together over landlines. Though I was only seven, my memories are clear. It was 1960. Chubby Checker had given us the twist, Gunsmoke had given us law and order, and the country had given us JFK. I was a second-grader at Sabal Palm Elementary School in Miami. We didn’t have a big house. My sister and I shared a bedroom. My brother, being the eldest, had his own.
Storying the Body, by Stevi L. Smith
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. I’m sitting on an exam table talking to a nurse practitioner about a pain in my lower left abdomen. I’ve only ever been to the gynecologist once—she prescribed me birth control to treat severe menstrual cramps and told me I shouldn’t be having sex. I wasn’t. I was sixteen then, and I’m nineteen now. This is a different doctor—my last one was in my hometown, and my mom had driven me.
Shabbas - Image Journal
IT’S OUR THIRTIETH SUMMER in Jackson Hole. Out west, the scenery aims to impress. Deer float over fences. Raptors skate the skies. But this year more than others, we’re the victims of extremes. The weather, for one, has never been weirder. It’s been both desert dry and monsoon wet. Roads are flooded, and instead of heading to Yellowstone, folks are being detoured. Still, there’s no denying the town is postcard perfect. Ninety percent of Teton County is fully vaccinated.
Everywhere Bergamo, by Marek Makowski
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. In the summer of 2020, a man who has lost much dreads reopening, when everyone will be with everyone again, but he will be alone. The sign on the window read: NO TALKING POLITICS OF COVID. He did not understand whether this meant any talk of the pandemic, so he did not speak at all. A large man sat in one of the free chairs in the corner, his mask pulled down to his neck, grinning.
A Patient Message, by Marlene Olin
“Doctor and the Doll” by PMillera4 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Patient Message for Dr. Epstein: After an hour of pushing buttons and cursing at my keyboard, I figured out how to set up your patient portal. Then I read the notes from our last visit. It appears that your version of our virtual appointment and my version of our virtual appointment differ. First, the chart says patient is a bad historian. You asked if there was illness in my family. Heart disease. Colitis. Intractable pain.
10 Reasons Why You Need to Continue Your Education
It is not common as we age to feel stuck and stagnant, lacking some direction for our future. You can shake up and invigorate your life by going back to school, finding a whole new purpose or reinventing what feels like a stale career track. Consider these ten reasons why you need to consider going back to school and how it can change your life. 1.Flexibility to Fit Your Life With the introduction of online courses, came the flexibility that many professionals needed to support their learning.
The Saturday Evening Post
Weekly Newsletter The best of The Saturday Evening Post in your inbox! My cat has no sense of rhythm. No matter the strain of music rocking our walls at two in the morning — be it Bacharach, Buzzcocks or Beyoncé — she lurches uncertainly and ungracefully, perplexed and perhaps even a little annoyed as I clutch her forepaws, trying to teach her a basic box step in our cramped living room.
The Saturday Evening Post
Weekly Newsletter The best of The Saturday Evening Post in your inbox! I was the child of Italian immigrants. When I was 11, I realized that I wanted to be an emigrant: I wanted to emigrate from my parents’ dark tenement to a place where they couldn’t reach me. For that matter, I also wanted to leave behind my older brother, an apathetic rebel.
The Saturday Evening Post
Weekly Newsletter The best of The Saturday Evening Post in your inbox! This story is a runner-up in our 2019 Great American Fiction Contest. See all of the winners. It’s warm for late October, Amy, and there’s a moon, not quite full. The lake is still, no wind, and I can see the Big Dipper. It reminds me of the nights we used to sit out here on the dock and tell stories. Where should I begin tonight? With your mother’s news? No, not yet.
The Saturday Evening Post
Weekly Newsletter The best of The Saturday Evening Post in your inbox! American screenwriter and novelist John Taintor Foote wrote scripts for the films Kentucky and The Mask of Zorro.. In his story “The White Grouse” published in 1922, John Jones is a young man who wants to follow his father’s footsteps by finding the perfect woman and a trusty dog.
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