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The accumulation of kind, affectionate gestures; black-and-blue finger marks; puppy love
By Our ReadersFebruary 2003On the weekends she stayed with him, the first sound she heard in the morning was the meowing of his cat. The people in the apartment next door also had a cat, only theirs was put out overnight; his was strictly an indoor cat, black and nearly a dozen years old and just beginning to turn fat. The next-door cat always came to its owner’s front porch and yowled to be let in. His crouched in the bedroom window, peering down, and the two cats carried on a conversation until the next-door cat went inside.
By Robley WilsonFebruary 2003February 2003Mabel Pettigrew thought: I can read him like a book. She had not read a book for over forty years, could never concentrate on reading, but this nevertheless was her thought.
Muriel Spark
I get up early. I wait for the light. I still trust the dawn more than I trust religion, more than I trust philosophy. Every morning the darkness disappears; morning never lets me down.
By Sy SafranskyAugust 2002June 2002One can live at a low flame. Most people do. For some, life is an exercise in moderation (best china saved for special occasions), but given something like death, what does it matter if one looks foolish now and then, or tries too hard, or cares too deeply?
Diane Ackerman
While they visited, that invisible beast Loneliness would shift on his paws and pad quietly out of the room, only to return faithfully when darkness fell and I crawled into a bed that was too big. Lucky for me, the kids always stayed as long as possible. Norah, especially, hated to leave. She’d cling to my hand or my neck with the ferocity of the early-abandoned.
By Alison LutermanMarch 2002I don’t have an American flag on my car or my front door. But I’m more of a patriot than Attorney General John Ashcroft, who studies the U.S. constitution as if it were a menu in a fashionable Washington, D.C., restaurant from which he’s free to pick and choose.
By Sy SafranskyFebruary 2002Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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