I know exactly where I was on July 16, 1969. Six weeks after high school graduation, three friends and I were parked along the Banana River at Cape Kennedy, part of an estimated one million people who had come to Florida for the same reason and to the same destination. We had spent the night in the car, ensuring a clear view across the river to a site about a mile or so away. Parked behind us was a young couple from Canada, who, like us, had spent the night there. We had been the first car to park. We tried to sleep, but lights from cars and vans kept us awake all night. Later that morning, July 16, 1969, we watched and cheered the launch of Apollo 11, carrying the crew that would land on the moon.
I had heard this anecdotally before, but it’s still surprising (and to see it confirmed) to learn which Americans are the most generous, in terms of giving to non-profit organizations. The confirmation is a book, Who Really Cares, by Arthur Brooks, professor of Public Administration at Syracuse University. It turns out that the Americans who give more are the ones who mistrust big government and generally live in the so-called red states.
For the first time in more than 900 years, the Bayeux Tapestry has returned to Britain for an exhibition at the British Museum. It is a woven account of the Norman Invasion of 1066, and it’s almost 230 feet (70 meters) long. The BBC describes five of its key scenes.
The Book of Genesis says that Eve was created from a rib of Adam, to provide a helpmate and companion. Many have pointed out that it was a rib that was used to create her, implying equality or, more pointedly, “equalness” in the eyes of God. The story of the fall is familiar – Eve is convinced by the serpent to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, she convinces Adam, and they’re both thrown out of Eden. For their disobedience, Adam has to work the soil, and Eve gets pain in childbirth. And we know the names and stories of her first two sons, Cain and Abel, and the name of her third, Seth, whom she recognizes as a gift.
Beyond those basic facts, there’s no further mention of Eve in the Bible. In To Eve: A Book-Length Poem, Sarah Dickinson Snyder doesn’t envision what Eve’s life was like so much as she considers Eve’s mind, her thoughts, her feelings, her hopes and dreams. And she uses Eve as a kind of lens to consider some of her own life and the life of women more generally. The poem is less an imagined biography and more of a reflection.
I worked as director of Communications for St. Louis Public Schools for eight months. It was the position I worked for the least amount of time in my entire career, the most chaotic job I ever held, and the one that likely remains the most vivid in my memory.
Perhaps it was the political battles inside the district, the arrests at school board meetings, the ongoing protests, my boss getting doused with a pitcher of water by a member of the school board, the typical chaotic day of an urban school district. It might have been the constat media exposure, starting my first day (eight separate interviews on a teacher sick-out) and continuing until my last day. I did more media meetings and discussions in those eight months than the rest of my career combined.
A lot of scenes have stuck with me; a few even got worked into my five Dancing Priest novels.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.
Photograph of Headquarters by St. Louis Public Schools.
Poet Tina Kelley seems fascinated with words, unusual often obscure words. Have you met an aeolist (a person who claims to be inspired), or been blessed by one? Have you experienced a diapause (a period of suspended development? Have you discovered that you might, at least on occasion, be a prosopagnosic (one who suffers face blindness), or that you can practice steganography (a form of writing that obscures, like invisible ink)?
In Field Guide to Noth American Words, Kelley takes those unusual words and others and creates poems, poems that are not obscure or unusual, vivid poems about life, birthdays, aging, hacked passwords, birthdays, the future (as seen through birds), an old doll in an attic, all those rooms that the hallways of unusual words can lead you to. Like any proper field guide, the words are arranged alphabetically.
The Summer 2026 edition of Cultivating Oaks Press is online today, and the theme is “renewing charity.” My new short story, “Decision on the Stairs,” is fiction, but it’s based on something that happened to my wife and I in London in 2012. We were getting ready for our day when fire alarms went off, and the hotel had to be evacuated. The elevators were not an option; we were on the 14thfloor, and the hotel was nearly full. There was no panic, but there was rising anxiety, and people were rushing to get out.
