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A teenage rite of passage, a prison barber, a husband’s unfamiliar face
By Our ReadersFood has powers. It picks us up from our lonely corners and sits us back down, together. It pulls us out of ourselves, to the kitchen, to the table, to the diner down the block. At the same time, it draws us inward. Food is the keeper of our memories, connecting us with our pasts and with our people.
Jessica Fechtor
The process of killing an animal was terrible and emotionally unpleasant, but it’s my responsibility to feel that emotion, because that’s the truth of what it means to eat and to draw resources from this planet. That’s the best way I can describe it: the terrible emotions I was filled with are the truth of what it means to be alive. When you live, something else dies. Even if you only eat plants, animals die for you to be able to eat. We do not talk about that often enough.
By Wyatt WilliamsThe drive from Homer, Alaska, to Casper, Wyoming, is more than three thousand miles, much of it on winding two-lane highways where moose and bears slip from the underbrush and stand in the road. It had already been a rough trip.
By David ZobySince I had no one else to ask, I asked the hunger where it wanted to go. It said, West, like that was a point on the map called Freedom. So I drove west. I stopped at a Walmart somewhere in Kansas and bought a propane camp stove and a tent, because hotels were not in the budget.
By Kate OsterlohWe had never heard of a kid who had cancer. We knew of teenagers who’d been killed in farming accidents and at least a few who had been maimed riding ATVs with no helmets, their skulls coming into contact with country roads. But not cancer. It seemed like something that happened to aunts and uncles. Combined with the lack of rain and the impending foreclosure, 1983 was beginning to feel apocalyptic.
By Doug CrandellA Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.
By Wayne Klaw“To the Bone” is an ongoing photography project documenting life and work on a small family farm in the Hudson Valley. Emily, a single mother of nine, manages their small farm with the help of her young daughters. I am drawn to tell Emily’s story and her efforts to keep her home and family together after unexpected loss and hardship. I am inspired by their strength and perseverance and how dignity, beauty, and love survive amidst it all.
By Maureen BeitlerSo early the mist remains hammocked / between hills. My hand / palms a calf’s muzzle. // We are two beings / drawn together by instinct. By this definition, / I have found the one.
By Megan J. ArlettThe dog weighs twelve pounds / and uses them as she pleases. / The king-size bed is not big enough. / Sleep enabler, stretch-monger, / when she wants to be touched, / she offers up the narrow white arc / of her belly. When a loud face / crowds her, she growls. Or, depending / on the weather, the time, the face, /she doesn’t.
By Catherine Pierce