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Stumbling Off My Soapbox

with humor and humanity, real-life social commentary by a mom with her hands in soap bubbles and on keyboards every day, sometimes a dangerous combination

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“Here she comes, running, . . . off the pedestal:  chains off, crown off, halo off, just a live woman.”

–Charlotte Perkins Gilman

About

Having recently moved east of my Eden, from the Pacific Ocean to the Appalachian Mountains, south of the Mason-Dixon line from Northern California, from sixteen years of unyielding dedication to Title-I public schools to an unexpectedly early retirement, from earning a paycheck since I was fourteen-and-a-half years old and working up to three jobs in order to…

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Ms. Z is a veteran schoolteacher, a freelance writer/editor, and full-time working mother again, after accepting a supporting role at her child’s school. She recently moved from the San Francisco Bay to the Appalachian Mountains, where she is learning to live in the woods with bears as well as to enjoy the regular exercises of…

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In What They Called Their Shangri-La

I think it was in 1957, when my paternal grandparents retired from the U.S. Army, after serving throughout the continental U.S. as well as in Guam, Japan, and Germany. The license plates still hanging in the garage attest to these milestones of their careers. Photographed, here, is their mid-century home in California, where they raised…

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“The world is violent and mercurial — it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love — love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.” —Tennessee Williams

“Leave safety behind. Put your body on the line. Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind–even if your voice shakes. When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say. Well-aimed slingshots can topple giants.” —Maggie Kuhn

"This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal." —Toni Morrison

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