Middle Cat said something interesting the other day. He said: “Character is the most important part of any story. If you think back to any of your favorite books, or even movies, the thing you’ll remember most clearly is the character. And probably the most important part of that is character motivation. If you know…
Category: A Piece of Our Minds
Eros Turranos: Grief through Poetry
Have you ever memorized a poem by accident? Happened to me a few years ago. A poem called “Eros Turranos” by the 19th-20th century American poet Edwin A. Robinson. I was going through a very bad breakup about which I don’t want to say more. I could say “out of respect to the parties involved”…
Talking Trash: Disability and Chores
There are tasks we assume short people will have trouble with. At just about five feet tall, I have plenty of experience there. But taking out the trash was never on the list of things I expected my height to cause problems with. It probably wasn’t on your list of short-people-problems either. About ten years…
Originality (Caturday Questions)
Middle Cat and Little Cat have tried to gin up a bidding-war for their artwork. Middle Cat’s brand trades on its sophistication. His claim to originality is that he is a cat who does not scratch furniture. Where, you might say, is his artwork, then? Middle Cat boasts that he is a performance artist; that…
Reason, Religion, Abortion: A Less Tentative Response
A side effect of being an editor is that bad-faith arguments hurt my soul. It’s actually a really interesting thing to feel as it happens. Kind of feels like heartburn. And what’s odd is it starts as a feeling and then I have to figure out what is making me feel that way. I’ve studied…
On Personal Independence
I’m writing this with fireworks exploding in the background. My neighbors like extended holiday celebrations. It’s been going on for days–just like the two weeks of fireworks around Christmas time. I suppose they’re celebrating independence. I am not feeling so much like celebrating independence right now. National Issues of Personal Independence Sure, there are all…
Struggle (Sunday Summary)
This has been a challenging week. We’re still reeling from the US Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision, and feeling the addition of more bad news as the Court seems set on dismantling more and more of the United States. We wrapped up Pride Month this week, too. We spent this week in celebration, in…
Different Values (Caturday Questions)
Big Cat, Middle Cat, and Little Cat have been roommates with Human-Mom for quite some time. How do they live together when their values are so different? Human mom’s idea of a good time involves tea and maybe waffles and maybe sitting down together (over Zoom) to do some writing. The cats’ idea of a…
From Pride 2022 to “Don’t Say Gay”
Yesterday marked the end of Pride 2022. All of the corporate rainbow logos will go back into the closet for another year and whatever rainbow capitalism items were in the stores will be marked down. Remember to stock up for next year, okay? Pride has been unusually challenging for me this year. I’ve been going…
Comfortable Dancing: The Importance of Sex Ed
I grew up in a suburb of New York City, which is widely known as a bastion of tolerance and liberality. But as far as I knew, there was only one queer kid in my grade. Out of a class of some 250. Which is to say the others did not feel welcome. This of…