In our cover story this month, Barbara Lloyd McMichael writes about H. Morgan Hicks, the owner of a yarn shop in Des Moines, Washington. In Toward a New Social Contract for Our Endangered Species, Dr. Peter A. Corning argues that we are on a road to collective self-destruction unless we make a radical course change. Annie Searle takes a look at all of the fires that are burning in her article The Fire This Time. My essay, It’s Too Bad, Tommy Wooten, is about a Yonkers teen who died long ago, tragically and foolishly. Profound, heroic, or tragic, there is more than one way to make your mark in life. – Patricia Vaccarino
Designing a Life by Barbara Lloyd McMichael As a knitter, a weaver, and an anthropologist, H. Morgan Hicks has created a life by design. He owns a bustling yarn shop, All Points Yarn, in Des Moines, Washington. By knitting together his own life, Mr. Hicks helps us to see the connection in all things.
Toward a New Social Contract for Our Endangered Species by Dr. Peter A. Corning Accelerating climate change, and an array of other serious global problems and conflicts, prompting some theorists to warn of a societal collapse, suggest that the time has come for a new, global social contract. Dr. Corning’s ninth book, Evolution and the Fate of Humankind, will be published this month by Cambridge University Press.
The Fire This Time by Annie Searle We knew that 2025 was going to be a year of significant change because of the election of a convicted felon to the presidency, but history sometimes takes a winding path and that’s where we are now.
A Penny for Your Thoughts by Patricia Vaccarino My story involves a penny and a little person. Let’s begin with the penny. I have a mystical attachment to pennies. Found money is extraordinarily lucky. Everywhere I go, I’m in the habit of finding lucky money on the street. Sums range from the single penny stuck in the bottom of a puddle to the fifty-dollar bill that had blown into my driveway the day after a gale-force windstorm.
NOTES FROM THE WORKING CLASS: It’s Too Bad, Tommy Wooten by Patricia Vaccarino Even today I’m haunted by Tommy Wooten because of what became of him. He died in a car crash. There are car accidents every day, but the brutality of Tommy’s car crash lingers.
From My Bookshelf: My personal library is composed of an eclectic range of books: old, new, classic, genre fiction, as well as literary fiction, and nonfiction. Aside from writing my own books, articles and essays, I review books I read. This month, I am sharing five books that do an excellent job of showing what it means to make your mark. – Patricia Vaccarino
A Woman’s Story by Annie Ernaux
Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty by Phoebe Hoban
Union Street by Pat Barker
Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker
The Tigers of Lents by Mark Pomeroy