The Thread

by Doreen Hamilton
Sounds of sirens….panic….intrusion
The invasion about to happen.
We protect ourselves and yet
There is danger all around.
Every moment can explode and
Change the next with violence.
The alarm warns but if it is too late
And the intrusion has happened,
How then do we pick up the thread
Of the moments of our lives linked together
Before as beautiful spun lace [...]

Love Affair

by Carl Eggers
Just over one hundred years ago, in 1899, a guy by the name of Corbet S. Sheldon, signed what is now a faded yellow “maker” sticker and stuck it inside of the instrument that became my violin. Eighty-one years later I found her in Southern Oregon. I say her because there was a [...]

Yankee Doodle Dandy Kid

by Allene Hickox
“Come on, Allene. Let’s go for a walk and see the troop train go by,” invited my Dad. At age six, I still wanted to please my Dad by doing what he asked. And a real troop train sounded exciting to me. Living as a child through the years of World War II [...]

Santa

by Lily Fong Endlich
In our Chinese household in North Beach in San Francisco during the mid-fifties, Christmas didn’t have much meaning until we children learned to sing Christmas carols at school and heard the stories of Baby Jesus born in a manger under the Star of Bethlehem, the three wise men visiting him and [...]

Last Stand at the Strand by Kara Jane Rollins

(This piece won 1st prize in the Jack London Short Story contest, sponsored by the Peninsula Branch of the California Writers Club!) Miss Myler convinced me early in 5th grade that I was a slovenly girl. Before that year, I was confident in school, but when she called on me with her leaden voice I forgot facts I had carefully learned. I was labeled most lazy in class when we did our daily geography drills, the regurgitation of each state’s exported products. Miss Myler praised students like Clarisa Widlow for being excellent. The rest of us didn’t stand a chance, the struggling, unwashed, bumbling, or unsure.