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The Greatest Scientist of a Generation

In Issue 8, December 2017, Issues Archive by Scott Wilson

“The Greatest Scientist of of a Generation” is Scott Wilson’s satirical take on what is the serious problem, CCD, or colony collapse disorder. Scientists couldn’t agree on the source of honeybee deaths, a real problem because honeybees are the pollinators of fruits like blueberries, vegetables like broccoli, and nuts like almonds. Scientists, corporations, and the INTERNET are tagged here.

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And

In Issue 8, December 2017, Issues Archive by Sophia DuRose

Sophia DuRose says it loud and clear in her essay “And.” She refuses to be labeled, having learned a lesson of discrimination against her Jewish faith when she was a teenager. Rather than taking the opinions of others at face value, she writes that we must “create our own opinions of worthiness and self-assurance.” Taking a line from Maya Angelou as her axiom, Sophia DuRose will, “like the air,” rise.

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Why I Am a Writer

In Issue 8, December 2017, Issues Archive by Maya Roe

It’s a summer afternoon and Maya Roe can’t write. The “overdramatic and rambling” prose hitting the page isn’t working. So, she goes out intentionally looking and seeing and feeling. Nature is not symbolism or metaphor. It just is. Stream and Forest. Bees and Moss. Cattails and Blueberry trees. All of this an “inexplicable world” to love.

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Motherhood, Ambition

In Issue 7, November 2017, Issues Archive by Claire Robbins

Robbins didn’t know herself before she was a mother at twenty, but she was determined to know herself as an adult. This is her story about the tension between motherhood and ambition, and how she didn’t allow ambition to lose.

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Those Who Cannot Remember the Past

In Issue 6, October 2017, Issues Archive by Sankar Chatterjee

After Sirajul Habib, an American youth and follower of Islam, sees displays of Nazi documents in Berlin, he wants to learn more about the Holocaust. In a later trip to Europe, he visits the Auschwitz Concentration Camps in Poland and is overcome by the enormity and scope of Nazi evil at Auschwitz I, the first site of the atrocities; and at Auschwitz II – Birkenau, where prisoners arrived in boxed rail cars.

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Arrival Day

In Issue 6, October 2017, Issues Archive by Shastri Sookdeo

What is “Arrival Day”? Sookdeo writes about this public holiday in Trinidad and Tobago with a critical eye. Started in 1995 to celebrate 150 years of Indian arrival in Trinidad, the name was later changed to Indian Arrival Day. Does the “Indian” in the name ignore other ethnic groups if the country’s makeup “is reflected by colonization in every part”? The issue is more complex than at first glance.

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Just Places: Physical Spaces and the Stories They Tell about Justice, Terror, and Tragedy

In Issue 6, October 2017, Issues Archive by David Will

An official NGO Observer at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, Will describes the exterior of the courthouse where the 911 conspirators are tried for capital crimes. Sitting on a dilapidated “out-of-service airstrip,” the low-slung building looks like a toolshed, but upon entering the building visitors witness “the world’s most sophisticated technology.” This space is not a symbol; it represents the physical implementation of justice. The question is: Can the Guantanamo military commissions offer a narrative “to reaffirm the country’s values and to offer closure”?

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Married Sleep

In Issue 6, October 2017, Issues Archive by Hilary Nelson Jacobs

Tender and instructive, the narrative and descriptive essay “Married Sleep” offers the reader an inside look—with equanimity—at a wife and husband team who makes it through a daughter’s debilitating illness, a husband’s demanding work schedule, and a wife’s alcoholism and healing.

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Rescue Me

In Issue 6, October 2017, Issues Archive by Kathryn Jones

These are the special tenants of Jones’ home: “A hound of calm character, lazy and laid-back”—this is Jack Jones—and a fierce “ten-pound terrier, black and white, with bulging eyes”—this is Dory. As the dogs age, Jones is cognizant of her own droopy eyelids and graying hair, but as long as she is alive they will add more dogs to their household.

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River Musings

In Issue 6, October 2017, Issues Archive by George Rothert

“River Musings” is not only about the reclamation of the Willamette River that flows through Portland and the development of Waterfront Park, Portland’s gathering space. It is also about the Hide Naito family that ran a successful importing business; relocated to Salt Lake City during the Japanese internment; and returned to Portland later to enlarge their business and enrich the city with their philanthropy.

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Revolving Like Ixion

In Issue 5, September 2017, Issues Archive by Eric Martin

An existential disquisition on the ultimate question: “Why are we here?” Doubting his teaching career, Martin returns to the novel Moby Dick to seek an answer to this perennial question. Perhaps in the end, it is unanswerable like “insight joined to silence.”