Flash fiction from my incomparable sister Laura! They Used to Call Them Stars By Laura J. Graham “Pinpoints of light against the dark,” said the old woman, combing her long silvery hair. And the little boy laughed as he set up his cans again for target practice with his sling shot. “Everybody knows that monsters […]
Author: Evelyn J. Willburn
Laughter, the strangest medicine
“Major Tom is stuck under the fence!” My father used to regale us kids with stories of his adventures with his cousin Jim, and this is one of my favorites: the two boys were acquainted with an old gentleman of the retired military sort, who often came to tea and had nothing whatever to do […]
Stay warm
I have a special affinity for fingerless gloves. One time, a pair of such gloves in olive-drab, paired with a shapeless, dark gray thrift-store coat, almost got me evicted from a downtown Anchorage hotel on suspicion of being a homeless person. But I digress. My real topic of interest today is the endless war between […]
Beware the roving bantha
I have heard it said that a bear’s only natural enemy is a meteorite; perhaps the same is true of snowplows. On Prince of Wales Island, snowplows move fast on the narrow, unlit roads, sporting a vast array of blinking colored lights, outlining a shape vaguely reminiscent of a Star Wars pack animal. Sometimes they […]
Goodbye, old friend
Some folks keep their loved ones’ ashes on the mantel for generations, while others resort to taxidermy when a beloved pet departs this earthly plane. As for me, I believe in rapid burial for my organic friends, but I must confess I have had the left-behinds of my long-defunct sewing machine sitting on a shelf […]
A day at the beach (c. 1976)
Author’s note: as noted above, I wrote this sometime in the mid to late seventies. It made my family laugh. Shout out to my amazing sister Laura, who has had it memorized for all these years. Without her, this little gem might have been lost forever in the mists of time. A Day at the […]
The kindness of strangers
In December of 2017 I went to Virginia for several weeks to help take care of my father. If I had known that he would die in mid-January, I (hope I) would have stayed for the duration, but I wound up leaving right before Christmas, and returning to Powhatan when I got the news. For […]
One perfect raven
I came out this morning to find a raven lying in the street under our power pole. I put on work gloves and picked it up. It had a heavy, healthy feel to it, and it bore not one trace of damage or corruption. Every glossy black feather was present and accounted for; the marvelously […]
A brief (personal) history of smoking
My father often spoke of his growing-up adventures with his younger cousin Jim, and one such adventure that comes to mind today is his experience hiding out behind a shed and smoking uncured rabbit tobacco out of a corn cob pipe. Although many people apparently smoke, chew, and make tea from rabbit tobacco, and swear […]
In praise of quiet tenacity
My dog Bandit was, in the vernacular of my people, “a caution.” I imagine that this term is related to the phrase “a cautionary tale,” which means, “listen while I tell you what this person did, and then go do something, anything, except that.” And truly, dear Bandit did many things that I would not […]