For over a thousand years, people walked on a trail or network of trails known as The Way of Saint James. By mid-20th century, pilgrim traffic slowed down to a trickle. Roughly fifty years ago it began booming back, as part of a global uptick in pilgrimage across faith traditions. Although The Way began […]
Jim Ross
After retiring from a career in public health research in early 2015, Jim Ross resumed creative pursuits in hopes of resuscitating his long-neglected left brain. He's since published 75 pieces of nonfiction, several poems, and 200 photos in 80 journals in North America, Europe, and Asia. His publications include 1966, Bombay Gin, Columbia Journal, Friends Journal, Gravel, Ilanot Review, Lunch Ticket, Kestrel, MAKE, Sisyphus, and The Atlantic. In the past year, he wrote and acted in his first play, and one of his nonfiction pieces led to a role in a soon-to-be-released major documentary film. His goal is to combine creative nonfiction with photography. He and his wife--parents of two health professionals and grandparents of four wee ones--split their time between Maryland and West Virginia.
Surrender
Creating a Civil Society in an Uncivil World
Five years ago, in late November, I walked past a blossoming Tent City in the greenspace abutting the court buildings in Victoria, B.C. Each day, a couple more tents were pitched. I saw residents raking and bagging leaves to maintain a clean space. Daily, they sat on the ground in circles, talking. I stopped at […]
Evolving Communities
For nearly forever, work is where I sought and found community. I knew it fell heavily on me to see that we had enough business to keep everybody employed, so they could feed themselves and their families, and so new jobs could be created. I connected to other communities—the YMCA, the American Film Institute, even […]
Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There
Even before the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 pandemic, pundits were already saying we were headed for a “new normal,” specifying ways life would change. And, after tens of millions were thrown out of work and filed for unemployment, the stakes grew higher, and the dimensions of the new normal even more […]
Seeking Protection from Those We Most Fear
A rock fight could be called by anyone, any time. Usually we made do with whoever was around. Sometimes, sentries ran around the neighborhood yelling, “Rock fight!” followed by, “by the island in the creek” or “in Jerry’s backyard.” A rock fight could happen almost anywhere. In the street, we grabbed handfuls of stones […]
Rhetoric v. Self-Defeating Realities
Notions of rhetoric vs. reality, intent vs. implementation, design vs. local variations are integral to the notion of “evaluability assessment.” In a long research career, if I learned one way of seeing that enhanced peripheral vision, it was that the first step toward evaluating anything whatsoever—initiatives to combat drug addiction, AA meetings, marriage counseling, or […]
Bearing Witness, One Life at a Time
Our eyes trip over a four-by-four inch bronze memorial embedded in a sidewalk in Cologne, Germany: Hier wohnte Jona ‘Johnny’ Herz J.G. 1942 Deportiert 1942 Theresienstadt Ermordet 11.7.1944 Auschwitz In English: “Here lived Jonah ‘Johnny’ Herz, born in 1942, deported to Theresienstadt, murdered on July 11, 1944.” It strikes us, first, they sent a newborn […]
An Invitation to Witness
After a solo pilgrimage along France’s Le Chemin de St. Jacques—rarely certain where or even if I’d find a bed for the night—I returned to Paris to fly home. On my last late-October night, I stepped out for a pre-dinner walk. I passed two women wearing hooded black coats who stood motionless on a shaded street […]
An Experiment in Inequality
After sixteen years of attending Catholic schools serving almost no non-white students, I applied for grad school to Howard University, one of the nation’s oldest historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). When friends asked, “Why’d you apply there?” I answered, “It’s time for me to experience a nonreligious school.” One inquisitive friend pressed, “What you […]
Helping Mom Communicate after the Dead Started Visiting
After a series of infarcts, Mom came to believe that her dead sister Madeleine and their dead father Frank were coming to visit; had already come and gone; or had disappointed her again by failing to show up. Mom’s delusions drove Dad crazy. “You father never did anything decent while he was alive. Why do […]
Running Darkly
With the same inevitability with which sea levels will rise, I wake every night from my drug-addled sleep to pee. I turn onto my right elbow, push myself up with my right hand, sit on the bed’s edge, take two measured breaths, lean my weight on the right leg to slowly reach vertical, lean backwards […]