Issue 60. April 2016
Some Plastic City Beyond
downloadThe accidental meeting of former lovers shapes Daniel Higgins' "Some Plastic City Beyond." Told mostly through dialogue, the story offers us the careful cadences of two people negotiating old wounds and new discoveries. (12:09)
What The Doctor Taught Me
downloadWhen family crises buffeted author Catherine Elcik with grief and stress, she found solace in the unlikeliest of places: Doctor Who. Or perhaps not so unlikely. For from this television program about time-shifting and agelessness and loss and endurance, Elcik learned powerful lessons about coping with the thieveries of illness and death. In this beautiful essay, Elcik offers wisdom to all of us--Whovians or not. (16:40)
The Art of Drumming Badly
downloadTo hear Melanie Senn tell it, she is not a good drummer. But what matters more than her musical and percussive talent is her skill in telling the story of how she took to the drums--at first as a way to connect to her musician husband, and then as a way to experience delight. In "The Art of Drumming Badly," Senn shares her joy in learning something new and in learning not to care about inhibitions and expectations. (11:17)
The Children's House
downloadA group of children and their slightly inattentive parents are the time-honored ingredients for narrative mischief. In KL Pereira's "The Children's House," the mischief involves the slipping and sliding boundaries between one space and another, one family and another, one person and another. Pereira evokes an eerily calm world in which families and identities can be pilfered and misplaced as easily as an object from a mantlepiece. (3:54)
