Student Showcase

When I say “Raquel Welch,” you probably think of her in that famously babacious publicity shot. She’s standing on the beach in a busty, fur bikini. The earth is parting. Mountains are falling. Volcanoes are going off all over the place. You’re probably thinking of...

John and I never did see Le Conte’s Thrasher on our recent birding trip to the Mojave desert. While our guide, an enthusiastic young man with exhaustive information about avian life and an occasionally exhausting determination to find each promised species, may have...

I think of Thanksgiving dinner as a military campaign, with a successful outcome requiring planning, execution, monitoring and the final mopping up.  Unfortunately, I am the general in charge, and I am ill suited to the task. I don’t like to plan the menu, I don’t...

I was 10 years old when I started making fires in my house. I'd grab a book of matches from the old man's night table drawer, where he kept them alongside packs of cigarettes, nail files, clippers, and such. For a kid growing up in the ‘50s and ‘60s, getting matches...

We sat in a semicircle in the gym listening to Mr. Miller. It was our first class of the year. As 4th graders, he told us, we would now change clothing for gym, and take a shower after class. Soon we were standing in two lines, boys on one side of the gym, girls on...

When I was growing up, my mother sewed everything my sister and I wore. Dresses. Skirts. Blouses. Bathing suits. Coats. Everything but our underwear.   By early August, my mother was already planning what we would wear on the first day of school. It was time to...

After my daughter, Eliana, gave birth to a healthy baby girl who instantly latched on to her breast, I was assigned to housesit the dog. Mom and Dad and baby Mila were healthy, happy and exhausted, and would be staying in the hospital for the night. Minnie, their...