The Finnish maternity package äitiysavustus, or baby box, is a tradition that welcomes new children to the world with a gift of life-enhancing baby supplies. Finland is a socially progressive country, and the government started supplying this box to new mothers in the 1930s to combat high infant mortality rates. The box has been a […]
The Finnish Baby Box: Welcome to the World! Read More »
In 1982, I went to work with my friend Dave hauling trash, using a 1950s International truck, a classic old 1-ton, open-bed pickup. Somehow Dave became our estimator, despite being A. legally blind and B. pathologically reluctant to wear his glasses. This made for some interesting if unremunerative estimates, and we often wound up working
Do They Throw Things Away They Might Need Someday? Read More »
A brief article and photograph by Kevin Arnold Ray’s marriages were provocative. One of my poet friends, Deidre Farrington Schoolcraft, can become piqued at Raymond Carver because, even after his first wife Maryann’s continual sacrifices for him, Ray divorced her and, by marriage, bestowed the rights to Ray’s work to Tess. Deidre wrote a poem
Raymond Carver’s Wives Read More »
Nobody thinks the origin of the term “money to burn” might be attributed to one person, but Horace Austin Warner Tabor, known commonly as “Haw,” may very well have been responsible for it. Haw Tabor was born on November 26, 1830 to a life of modest means. He trained as a stone mason, and in
Pioneer Profiles: HAW Tabor Read More »
I came out of the Sears optometrist’s room and saw my mother clearly for the first time in memory. “You have freckles,” I said. My vision had certainly changed. Later, I would find out that these words hurt her feelings. My mother, red-headed and of German ancestry, had a lot of freckles. Like me, she
Vision Issues: A Cock-Eyed World View Read More »
In his splendid essay called “On an Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual,” Schopenhauer points out that when you reach an advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent order and plan, as though composed by some novelist. Events that when they occurred had seemed
Joseph Campbell on Schopenhauer, Will, and Life’s Composition Read More »