names and roles taken directly from a seriously cheesy VHS TV series called Ewoks (which I probably found for a quarter at a garage sale). What I remember most is my daughter’s bright eyes as she tromped around the house after her older brother, who was always kind to her.
We used to call them the funnies, and I have a memory of sitting on my dad’s big lap while he folded the newspaper in half, then quarters, so he could read them to me. This would have been on a Sunday, because I remember the strips as being full-color. I still read the daily comics, even though most of them are terrible – tired, unfunny, boring, and retreading the same exact ground for decades on end. Once in a while a strip comes along that’s electrifyingly good –Calvin & Hobbes, Boondocks, Cul de Sac–but they don’t last long, usually because their creators have the courage to cancel them when they’ve run out of steam. So I read out of habit, with no expectation of transcendence. But every once in a while one of them pierces my heart, like today’s Pearls Before Swine, by Stephan Pastis.
My friends, I’m offering a bunch of brand-new one- to three-day creative writing workshops in 2018. Topics include The Freedom of Form, Playing with Tense and Point of View, Writing through Pivotal Moments, and –for the first time ever– Creative Writing Boot Camp! Dates, descriptions and details can be found below. I’d love to see you in one of these workshops.
Poem of the Week, by Robert Hedin
Once, when I was bushwhacking through the woods and came to a clearing, I saw an owl in the tree closest to me. It was perched on a limb about ten feet off the ground, and the tree was about ten feet from me, and I had never been that close to an owl. The owl’s face was mesmerizing – flat and soft-looking, with eyes fixed on mine. I tilted my head to take it in better, and the owl tilted its head too. I tilted my head the other way, and so did the owl. Back and forth we went, in rhythm with each other, just me and the owl, in silence. When I need to conjure up peace inside myself, I think of that owl. And now I will also think of this quiet, beautiful poem below.
Owls, by Robert Hedin
Owls glide off the thin
wrists of the night,
and using snow for their feathers
drift down on either side
of the wind.
I spot them
as I camp along the ridge,
glistening over the streambeds,
their eyes small rooms
lit by stone lamps.
For more information about Robert Hedin, please click here.
Minnesotans! I’m offering three free workshops this spring on the transformation of trauma. 
I’m thinking of the man in the white shirt and the black pants, the one holding a briefcase, who stepped in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square and stood there. I’m thinking of the girl in the long dress, the one who slid a flower into the barrel of the gun the officer had trained on her. I’m thinking of the woman who began a conversation with and ended up becoming a second mother to the boy who murdered her own son. I’m thinking of this tiny beautiful prayer by Danez Smith. A new year to all. May ruin end here.
“It was a time like this. . . when all things fall apart.”
Thirty years ago I stood in a kitchen reading through a letter of complaint sent to a business about one of their products. “Oh my God,” I remember saying. “Whoever wrote this letter is a horrible speller. And the grammar? Jeez!” Then I turned the page over and looked at the signature. And realized that the letter had been written by someone I loved, someone who had worked incredibly hard their whole life long, someone who could always be counted on to help, someone who was right there in the room. 
Alison McGhee 