Just One Thumb by Gayla Mills
I’ve been using an old refurbished desktop, just a couple hundred bucks. It’s okay—except for its geriatric pace and annoying habit of turning itself back on after shut down. Then I started getting threatening messages from Microsoft reminding me it can’t be upgraded to Windows 11 and will become even less capable and more vulnerable. Its days are numbered. My new Dell arrived last week and I began prepping for the switch. Since I didn’t want my files in the cloud (I’m under the illusion that I have some privacy left), I needed to back … Continue reading Just One Thumb by Gayla Mills
Future Tense by Fred Wilbur
The New Year has ambled in and made itself at home, decorations are packed away, the refrigerator leftovers are cleaned out, life is out there in the future. It is checking up on our resolve to do, to be, and to think better; to lose weight, to be kind to the homeless, to take our children to exciting places. How are we doing three weeks in? I sometimes wonder about the difference between planning ahead and prediction. The first has always seemed to me like a wise strategy, though I confess I anticipate (worry?) a … Continue reading Future Tense by Fred Wilbur
Why Visual Identity Matters More Than Ever in the AI Content Era by Art Meder
I’m a Chicago-based visual artist working primarily with street photography and short-form video. My work focuses on capturing the city through a retro, nostalgic, movie-like lens—observing everyday moments, people, light, and atmosphere as they naturally unfold. I’ve been building my creative profile for a little over three years. Much of that time wasn’t spent posting content or chasing metrics, but studying. I immersed myself in different formats, references, and visual languages, paying close attention to how artists translate reality into something emotionally recognizable. Nearly a year and a half was dedicated specifically to observing street … Continue reading Why Visual Identity Matters More Than Ever in the AI Content Era by Art Meder
Names by Esther Sadoff
Cottonwood trees are producing more fluff. I am jealous of things so aptly named. The verb take can be a phrasal verb with so many meanings: take off, take up, take in, take away. If I had a name it would be the sound of a bird making its nest in the empty gutter. It would be the sound of wings flitting over roofs, a thirst without forecast, a number so vast it doesn’t need to be counted. How about a name so simple you forget it ever meant something? A name that takes nothing … Continue reading Names by Esther Sadoff
Feeding Horses and Other Things by Billie Hinton
When she walks out to the barn for the evening feed, what she notices first is how dark it is already, and how, with the darkness, a stillness sets in. Stillness is not the same as quiet. The soft but urgent whinny of the pony wanting dinner ripples from the front pasture, the drumbeat crunch crunch crunch crunch of hooves hitting fallen leaves begins as the herd files into the paddock. The pony and two donkeys stop at the gate that leads to their side of the barn. The two horses walk to their stall … Continue reading Feeding Horses and Other Things by Billie Hinton
The Second Christmas by Mary Trvalik
I missed my son’s voice this Christmas. Of all of us, Steven’s voice was the deepest. And that includes all the voices of our best-entire-family friends, the Eisenheims. Bruce (Steven’s dad) and the Eisenheim men (there are three) are all over six feet tall (just like Steven), but even so. In a room completely filled with Eisenheims and Trvaliks, you could still pick out Steven’s voice from the crowd. That’s how deep it was. Deep and resonant. Even his laugh was deep. He laughed a lot. That’s when I noticed it, actually. Christmas week, on … Continue reading The Second Christmas by Mary Trvalik
Walnuts by Sharon Perkins Ackerman
They’re the last to disappear, along with hickory, spicing the ground from mid-autumn through December. I stumble over carpets of the fermenting harvest, some greasy and quick to roll an ankle if you aren’t careful. Juniper and Bittersweet, the other malingerers, droop along the walnut path leading to a new year. So often on these daily walks, I gaze around to see something I recognize, looking to the ground that remembers what happened here, last year and years before. Otherwise, the busy mind by habit, locks itself into its present worries, generally things that can’t … Continue reading Walnuts by Sharon Perkins Ackerman
Cheesecake by Con Chapman
Mark didn’t want to go to Jackie and Jonathan’s—he had too much studying to do before the end of the semester—but Marci insisted. “You can’t study all the time,” she said, but he was the only one of the four of them in graduate school, and was under pressures they weren’t. “Can we at least leave right after we eat?” he asked. “No walks in the woods this time?” Marci gave him a sideways glance. Getting back to Boston from the North Shore on a Sunday was never an easy drive, and the later you … Continue reading Cheesecake by Con Chapman
Ho Ho Streetlight by Trudy Hale
The season of Christmas swoops in, ahead of me and my best intentions. I’ll never be a person who has all the family and friends crossed off the list, gifts sweetly wrapped, silky ribbons, satiny bows. Lured by magazines’ designer fine table settings and sparkling trees, loaded with heirloom ornaments. Oh, well. I sat down, stared out my window at sunlight glittering across a barn’s metal roof. I scribbled and scribbled. I scribbled some more. What does it mean? Especially giving. The art of giving. Over the years, I have sometimes goofed with a gift. … Continue reading Ho Ho Streetlight by Trudy Hale
Away Games by E. H. Jacobs
I inhaled the soot-sotted grime of New York’s summer, exhaled your scent: lavender and rose. Let me explain, because you had gone to Yankee Stadium solo, or with someone else, who knows. Certainly not me, who always inhaled whatever blackness New York offered, you always said. The Yankees were in town, winning or losing I don’t know, you’d be surprised to hear, with all the cards, keychains, jerseys, helmets, autographs. The Mantles and Marises, the Judges and Jeters, the Ruths and Rodriguezes. You name it. I pictured you in that pinstripe jersey I had bought … Continue reading Away Games by E. H. Jacobs