A First Friend

By Margaret Kokka

In the 1930’s my Japanese immigrant parents had forged their life dependent on my father’s work for the Pacific railroad that provided a company owned house. Located in a rural isolated whistle stop in eastern Oregon with no neighbors for miles around, my two brothers and I formed our own playgroup. The three of us (born two years apart) ate, slept, fought, and played together. We shared a nanny goat who provided us with milk, Our playground was along the banks of the nearby Deschutes River or in our backyard covered with tumbleweeds swirling in the hot summer heat. During our first six years we shared childhood diseases—measles, whooping cough and the occasional flu. We grew up without the benefit of electricity, indoor bathroom facilities, or hot running water but this was not experienced as a hardship; the inconvenience of an outhouse, heating water for our outdoor “hot tub” or grinding the gramophone to listen to Japanese music recordings were simply part of our life.

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The Consolation Of Solitude

By Pat Gallagher

“I vont to be alone”, Swedish-born film star Greta Garbo is reputed to have said.  It’s all I remember of her. Never saw any of her films; didn’t understand the mystique surrounding her. I thought she was odd. Did she marry? Have a lover? Have children? I’d no idea, but her desire to be alone seemed an aberration. I was young then. It would be a long time before I understood.

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Things I Wish They Had Told Me

By Marjorie Roth

Ours was a close family even though we were scattered around the country. When I say family, I am talking about my father’s family. There were eight surviving children who as adults continued the bond of their childhood. Growing up in Kissimmee, Florida, running the general store, being the only Jewish family probably contributed to the closeness. The stories that came down to me from my grandmother described how the children seemed to hang together in couples. All her children had nicknames which added to the intimacy. For example, my father was called Lovey. We treated it as a proper name, so my cousins called him “Uncle Lovey”. There was a family story about my uncle who, as a shy child, when asked his name would answer “My name is Jody, but they call me sweetsum”. There seemed to be a birthing arrangement of boy-girl-boy girl. The close pairs of siblings –  Alda and Lovey, Morton and Sis, Dora and Jody – represented that.

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The O’Connor’s

By Peggy Phillips

My mother is the oldest of seven children. Growing up, all the families lived in the greater Los Angeles area. We Jordan kids were just five of the 29 grandchildren our grandparents had. Mostly, we were like stair steps, born year after year after year, but in 1960, the year my youngest sister was born, there were four grandchildren born within a few months. My grandparents youngest grandchild and first great-grandchild were born the same year. While some of us lived close enough to attend the same grammar school and high school, most lived far enough away that we saw each other on occasional weekends, for birthday parties (which with so many kids were a pretty regular event), and all the holidays. Christmas Eve at our house, Easter at my Aunt Lola’s, Thanksgiving at Aunt Baby’s, a summer party at the O’Connors because they had a swimming pool, and so on. Cousins visited back and forth and were chosen to accompany families with same-age children on vacations, skiing trips or sailing to Catalina with our uncles and their kids.

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Class Photo

By Duff Reiter

When he died, my father’s funeral arrangements and financial affairs fell to me. Years earlier, at my urging, he had set up his modest estate as a trust which made it easy to administer and disperse to his children whom he named as his sole beneficiaries. The funeral was well attended; the wake even more so. One by one, his friends pulled me aside to tell me how much they loved him. They raised their glasses, cried over him and toasted to his everlasting memory.

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Milosz & The Metropolitan

By David Schweidel

Riding a leisurely train down along the Hudson from Poughkeepsie to New York, I ate an avocado sandwich, read Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and then, with a map my friends in Poughkeepsie had lent me, plotted a sight-filled route from Grand Central Station to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The river disappeared behind dark buildings, the train passed through a series of short tunnels, I studied the map.  I didn’t want trouble out on those mean city streets so I set tough rules for myself:  Don’t stop.  Don’t gawk at the tops of buildings.  Don’t look confused.

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Grief Interrupted

By Pat Gallagher

It has been a year now since Peter lost his struggle to breathe, his heart and lungs no longer able to bear the strain of fighting against the aggressive Parkinson’s disease that ravaged his body and mind for 12 years. A year since I’d stood at his bedside that night in mid-October staring at the gray corpse that hours earlier had been my brother. I sobbed convulsively, “He suffered so much,” I howled. My husband held me. Our youngest brother Michael choked back tears.

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Seeing Homelessness

By Daniel Danzig

We walk past or around homeless persons every day on the sidewalks of Oakland and San Francisco. Along our city streets and through freeway underpasses we carefully drive past ramshackle homeless encampments.  Some of my images are made from the perspective of a casual passerby. Those photographs show people sleeping or lying on the street under blankets, newspapers, or nothing at all. They are anonymous, faceless, not so much people, as “a social issue.” Other photographs are made from the perspective of a seeker. Those images (and conversations) attempt at understanding and a desire to see those who are without homes (or adequate food, clothing, health care, or employment) as persons possessing innate human dignity, with hopes and dreams, not unlike that casual passerby or more importantly, the photographer himself. Click on images to enlarge. 

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Search

By Alice Feller

By the time Jessica finished fifth grade she was the biggest kid in her small private school, even bigger than all the sixth graders.  Strangers on the street had begun to mistake her for a Cal student. She seemed miserable in her little school. One day we were alone in the kitchen and I sat down across the kitchen table from her as she bent over her homework.

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