Once, during the course of a conversation with a colleague who was a woman of color, I happened to refer to her as an African American. Her response left me confused. Don't call me that, she said. I've never been to Africa; I don't know the first thi...
No air conditioning? How can you sleep??a friend asks, horrified. I've just revealed that my family has decided to turn the air conditioner off and trim our electric bill. Nobody opens a window, day or night, warns another friend, whose windows have...
Good-bye my Fancy! Farewell dear mate,dear love! I'm going away,I know not where, Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again, So Good-bye my Fancy. Now for my last-let me look back a moment; The slower fainter ticking of the clock is in...
My father, Dale, hits on P.J. Harvey at her rock show. Actually, it is a P.J. Harvey lookalike. There are dozens like her, wannabe rock stars wearing ankle boots with pin-sized heels. The others, boys with thrift shop tees over crisp oxfords, men lik...
Most of us look away when we pass strangers. It is the expectional person who stops to help the woman maneuvering her kids and groceries up the staircase. We rarely give up in line or on the subway or bus. Locked into our automobiles, we prefer gridl...
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death. It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in hal...
Charles saw them both at the same time: the small white bird floating from among the park trees and the girl wheeling down the walk.1 The bird glided downward and rested in the grass; the girl directed the chair smoothly along the sunlit, shadowy wal...
A little boy came up to his mother in the kitchen one evening while she was fixing supper and handed her a piece of paper that he had been writing on. After his mom dried her hands on an apron, she read it and this is what it said: For cutting the gr...
There are two types of people in the world. Although they have equal degrees of health and wealth and the other comforts of life, one becomes happy, the other becomes miserable. This arises from the different ways in which they consider things, perso...
Books are to mankind what memory is be the individual. They contain the history of our race, the discoveries we have made, the accumulated knowledge and experience of ages; they picture for us the marvels and beauties of nature, help us in our diffic...
1.Outside a muffler shop: No appointment necessary, we hear you coming. 一家消声器店外：根本不用预约，我们听到你来了！ 2.Outside a hotel: Help! We need inn-experienced people. 酒店门外：帮帮忙！我们缺少常住小酒馆...
Observe a child; any one will do. You will see that not a day passes in which he does not find something or other to make him happy, though he may be in tears the next moment. Then look at a man; any one of us will do. You will notice that weeks and...
PART ONE I am a violin. Plain looking as I am, I have a wonderful sound. I used to play soft, sweet rhythm in the hand of my young master. But now, lying in the complete darkness, Im totally discarded, forgotten, waiting for my end in this dead silen...
My grandmother became a widow in 1970. Shortly after that, we went to the animal shelter to pick out a puppy to keep her company. Grandma decided on a little terrier that had a reddish-brown spot above each eye. Because of these spots, the dog was pr...
The silent young woman in bed number six is called Jasmine. So am I, but names are only superficial things, floats bobbing on the surface of the water, and we share deeper connections than that. Which is why she fascinates me - why I spend my off-dut...
