Blog
Asking questions can lead you to new places. Writing helps bring you to answers. And more questions.
Here, I’ve collected writings on a number of topics. Sometimes they’ve been published elsewhere, and other times they’re just for this blog.
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1: Thought Are roses still discounted the day after Valentine’s Day, if on Valentine’s Day there was a mass shooting? Or are those clipped stems, floating in a vat of water, still full price? After all, it’s a supply-and-demand thing—the way gun sales go up after a mass shooting—and either way, these people stand to…
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The front room of my house is called the pawffice. It has a broad desk, a chair, three windows, a guitar, and a varying number of cats, depending on which spot they fancy that day, that hour, that instant. I used to have to share the pawffice. Stephanie and I both started to work from…
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A few months ago, Fear No Lit accepted my pitch for an interview series called Fail Better. It explores how writers become better through trial and error, failing and learning how to fail a little bit less, a little bit better, the next time. It has been fun to learn from each writer.
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Salma’s point of view
My graduate assistantship with the President’s Commission on Diversity requires me to write one Voices of Diversity article each semester. I have to find someone with an interesting story to tell, then tell it. It’s great. Writing feature articles is one of my favorite things. It’s mostly the reason why I became interested in journalism in the first…
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My Found Polaroid
I had a flash fiction piece published by this interesting project called Found Polaroids. The website’s founder has been collecting polaroids from all over, and as the site says: “The result is this: Found Polaroids, a collection of over 6000 images.” More than one hundred photos already live on the site, but that’s just the start.…
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five year veggieversary
Stephanie and I started an experiment five years ago today. We decided to eat a vegetarian diet for the month of October. We’d both tried it a few times before. But this time we did it for a reason. We did it to remember our friend, Stephanie’s best friend, Amanda. Amanda, a longtime vegetarian, was…
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eclipsed
Stephanie and I had a good time watching the super moon eclipse last night. Here’s the best photo I could get with my camera and tripod. Happy Apocalypse, everyone!
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Mankato, Minnesota: The good, the bad, and the “different.”
People back home always ask me, “How’s Minnesota?” It’s great, I tell them. The weather is nice (for now) and warm (also, for now) and the sky is clear (you get the picture). My classes are great, and I sometimes wonder how I got so lucky. Some days while my wife works, I sit and…
James Figy 