Nearly Nine on Mash Stories WON!
“Nearly Nine” is a short story I wrote for a contest on MashStories.com. I was fortunate enough to get short listed, and I was even more fortunate to win!
A big thank you, and much credit, has to go to the people who shared, commented, and voted on my story. The feedback was encouraging, and it was fun to hear people’s reactions. The win is encouraging for my future creative writing endeavors.
If you’re interested, you can read “Nearly Nine” on MashStories.com. Second place went to “Lost Balls” by Ross Baxter, and third place was awarded to Carrie Guss for “Tina, Trapped and Released”. Excellent stories, all.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to buy $100 worth of hipster writing glasses and typewriters. I’ve arrived, baby!
Blackout
Road Closed to Pedestrians: A Review
The show began before it began.
A small crowd of us gathered before the Belbas Theatre doors in the Washington Pavilion. Children dashed around clumps of adults from all generations. I was there with my family, eagerly awaiting “Road Closed to Pedestrians”, a mime and dance performance by Cie Macadâmes.
My interest in the show, beyond a general appreciation for art, stemmed from my relation to one of the producers, Jenny Brass. This stop was the penultimate stop on a cross-country tour for Make Theatre Company that had begun in Arizona and would culminate in the Twin Cities.
As the hour grew, ticket holders shifted from foot to foot; they looked around the room at the staff; they checked their watches and cellphones. Then a door marked “Employees only beyond this point” opened and a dark-haired woman, dressed in the bohemian rags of a stylized urchin, peered out. She crept into our midst, tightly clutching a large, beige piece of luggage. This Traveler, played by Clément Chaboche, stared at us with wide, dark eyes and cautiously plotted her way through the space.
Behind her followed a man with similar wardrobe and a bass clarinet slung around his neck. His manner was easy and casual, the opposite of the anxiety of his predecessor. He followed her as she wove through the crowd. The onlookers rearranged, like quicksilver, pooling around the ever-shifting focus.
The show had begun.
Dinosaurus
Ian within an egg
Paper Airplanes
Cie Macadâmes
Skylight
Moon, streams
Padawan
Down with the illness
Sunbeam
How not to cook stir fry
This January I started taking an online course offered by Stanford University (ever heard of it??) called Child Nutrition and Cooking 2.0, taught by Maya Adam. The course is presented through a series of videos, surveys and quizzes, and the videos cover nutrition concepts, cooking lessons and terrifying, paralyzing, nightmare-inducing statistics about child nutrition.
Inspired by one of the cooking lessons, I decided I would learn to make stir fry. Being rather new to cooking in general, and stir fry in specific, I knew I’d need a practice run. One night, after the kids were asleep, I set to making my first batch of stir fry with plum sauce.
It did not go according to plan.