Editor’s note: Five additional portraits are below McLaughlin’s essay. By BILL McLAUGHLIN Many years ago while working on environmental issues and getting quite angry at the political and corporate entities that were contaminating the air and groundwater in the rural area where I was living, an experienced activist and dear friend gave me some advice …
By JIM McKEEVER The woman eases herself into a chair across from a man in the waiting room, sets her walker aside and goes into detail about her many surgeries. “I’ve been cut 24 times,” she says, launching into a laundry list of diseases, including diabetes, renal failure, fibromyalgia. She says she is 57, grew …
By DENNIS HARROD At a trailhead leading to a path through woods and fields flush with late summer’s abundance of gold and green, where the wind rustled leaves and shook a few loose, and a scent of fall hinted at what was to come, someone had scrawled a message of despair meant to harm any …
Debbie Urbanski writes with raw honesty about the choices we make as individuals and as a species. She examines the vulnerability of a woman who discovers she has inherited a BRCA1 breast cancer mutation (herself) and the fate of a planet whose inhabitants continue to make choices that are not sustainable. And she does all …
Push Day By MIKE FISH Seven portages already, muskeg up to here Big water, stiff headwind all day Hands hard, good mates, no fear Where’s the site, you say Around the bend and through the narrows Sun baking down, visions of a place Esker topped with pine, plenty of space Shoulders sore, fading daylight Where, …
By ALLISON SKLANEY The color of the sun, perky and plentiful, the dandelion evokes emotion, usually a negative one. Brought to America by European settlers, the once prized dandelion is now perpetually rooted up and sprayed with chemicals. In a culture where curbside appeal equals the two-inch grass of a golf course, the starry shaped …
Sense of Decency 