When You Let the Light In
I learned the meaning of the word “community” at an early age, but it has changed for me through the years. As a kid, community meant...
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cassieebrown
- Apr 7
- 5 min
When the Grass Gets a Little Long.
My neighbor across the street tells me he has asthma, as he pauses from mowing his lawn with a push-mower. It’s early April, but the...
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cassieebrown
- Feb 14
- 3 min
When You Remember What You Are.
It’s an unseemly warm Ash Wednesday today. Bulb flowers are threatening to bloom before March, with stems and leaves pressing up through...
52 views1 comment
cassieebrown
- Jan 14
- 4 min
When the Temperature Drops.
I recall hoping for snow days as a child with fingers crossed. Wishing on the stars that sparkled clearer and sharper in the cold of...
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cassieebrown
- Nov 8, 2023
- 3 min
When You Get Fired Up.
The weather is unseasonable right now. A warm snap makes the air balmy, the breeze still scented with the crispness of fall leaves....
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cassieebrown
- Jun 22, 2023
- 4 min
When You Get Sunburned
Hope wakes me every morning and gets me out of bed—firm and insistent as that sunshine. And there’s a lot of sun in my life. Yesterday...
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cassieebrown
- May 11, 2023
- 3 min
When Your Heart Beats.
Hospital waiting rooms feel like thinly-veiled restlessness. To know them is to resent them—the breath of anxious love hangs in the air...
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cassieebrown
- Apr 13, 2023
- 5 min
When You Can't Breathe.
Today is my sister’s birthday. She would be thirty-nine today, if she hadn’t left this world as teenager who still watched Disney movies...
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cassieebrown
- Feb 23, 2023
- 4 min
When It Gets Personal.
I got my haircut today at my barbershop. I sat in the chair a regular, knowing which barber coaches pee-wee league football and who likes...
105 views1 comment
cassieebrown
- Dec 10, 2022
- 5 min
When You Can’t Fix It.
Yesterday I returned from a professional conference where I was one of a few dozen people in my field working in my area, at my level, in...
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cassieebrown
- Nov 15, 2022
- 4 min
When You Take Offense.
Several inches of snow came overnight. It’s now above freezing. This morning, I listen as it melts off of our pines and sugar maple and...
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cassieebrown
- Nov 13, 2022
- 4 min
When You Scrape Your Windshield.
There was frost on my windshield this morning when I left my house for church. It was not the hard and wicked frost of winter. It was...
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cassieebrown
- Jul 24, 2022
- 4 min
When You Follow the Recipe.
My great-grandmother, Blanche, made a dessert salad for church picnics and holidays that was canned fruit, whipped cream, and love. She...
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cassieebrown
- May 29, 2022
- 2 min
When you can only speculate.
My life has been made of speculative fiction for quite a while. This year has been a pile of good books and bad health. I have enjoyed...
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cassieebrown
- Feb 24, 2022
- 4 min
When You Look Beyond.
My mother loves to decorate with things she describes as “primitive.” Rough wood. Cast iron. Antique farm equipment gone to rust. All...
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cassieebrown
- Feb 6, 2022
- 4 min
When You Don't Know What Else to Say.
My uncle died yesterday of an illness no one bothered to investigate in a nursing home in the middle of nowhere. He had been placed on...
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cassieebrown
- Feb 3, 2022
- 4 min
When He Sees His Shadow.
Yesterday was Groundhog Day, and the beginning of February often brings fearful storms to the places where the prairies kiss the Ozarks....
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cassieebrown
- Dec 18, 2021
- 3 min
When You Decide to Walk
When I walked to the post office, it was chilly, overcast, and gusty, but quiet enough that I could hear the wind whipping the American...
38 views0 comments
cassieebrown
- Dec 9, 2021
- 5 min
When You Leave No Trace
On Saturday, I stood beside my best friend and watched his tall three-year-old jump around on playground equipment with a fearlessness I...
36 views0 comments
cassieebrown
- Nov 26, 2021
- 4 min
When You Stop Repeating Yourself.
Today I put black and white ornaments on a small, artificial tree with my mother. We twisted paperclips into ornament hangers and hung up...
49 views0 comments
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