jumpingfish

We thought the backpack belonged to the two women across the Taco Deli picnic table from us. They had said yes when I asked if it was theirs. I must have misunderstood. It turned out to belong to Marco who walked up a few minutes later, clearly drunk and apparently homeless. “I’m not sure I’d […]

It’s a fine thing, that Oak tree sapling poking up out of the pot from the acorn we poked into the dirt in the pot under the mulch in the fall. A fine thing, that spring-green finery, ever optimistic under blue skies and under chicken wire to keep the squirrels at bay. And it’s a […]

The sky was blue. The sun was high in the sky. And these were the smiles of my brother’s daughters.

We made New Year’s cards this year that had a cover with the image of the sun sitting on the horizon. We left if up to the viewer to derive a meaning — something like Ben Franklin’s observation about George Washington’s chair. If I know the fair and industrious Trudy well, her preferred interpretation might […]

They stood there looking at the blackboard, craning their necks, staring at the equations and the calculations and the trajectories. The white men in their white shirts and skinny early 60s ties and the colored computer Katherine Goble Johnson. They puzzled over math they didn’t know — elliptical to parabolic trajectories. And then her eyes […]