Michelle Blake

Jean Valentine is small and white-haired. When she greets me at the elevator, she is full of an energy that shines in the dim hallway. Inside her three-room apartment, a woman is there helping out, Christine, who comes from nine to one every weekday. After she has introduced us, Jean says, “I’ve lost most of

One cold morning in January, I wake before dawn and write down: It’s ridiculous to blame anyone else for our lives. Our lives are gifts that exist long before we enter them and go on long after we leave them, intact, just as they are. What we do and see and learn is what we

Reflections in an Election Year   Once upon a time, a very, very, very long time ago, a young woman went to college on the West Coast.  We’ll call her M.  It was the fall of 1969.  For the first few months of her freshman year, she continued to be a good, dutiful student who

On a perfect summer afternoon in the hills of Bath County, Virginia, I find myself walking down a shaded grass path that winds along past an ice-cold pond and dead-ends at a broad, cool river.

Last fall our town church had its annual fair, and as usual the library held its book sale on the same day. The weather stayed warm and dry, so we ate barbecue chicken and potato salad, seated at long tables next to the white wall of the church, which reflected the sunlight and made the air feel even brighter and warmer; shopped at the White Elephant sale, where I found a pair of giant felt slippers to slide over my boots when I bring in wood during the winter; and wandered down to the library to buy used books.