Rummaging through my parents' attic the night before writing my acknowledgements, I discovered all twenty editions of the seventh-grade newspaper I published. My friends and I circulated five privately run newspapers that year, and I discovered last night that I had the finest contributors of all the papers.

This web site is an updated expression of my childhood dream, and I still love to collect and showcase other people's work I admire. I have the following friends and acquaintances, all of whom I've met online, to thank for allowing me to republish their work here.  (A link attached to a name goes to the writer's blog or their other online page.  A link attached to a poem or other work goes to the slow reads page where that work appears.)

Dave Bonta -- "The Art of Reading," "Why I Love the Old Testament," "Therapy," and an explanation of haibun
Sage Cohen -- "The Art of the Thank-You Note"
Teju Cole --"Slow Reader"
Dale --"Footnotes"
Patry Francis --"Hotel"
Rabbi Shai Gluskin --"'Leturn to Your Loots'" and an explanation of counting the Omer
Lekshe -- "And Suddenly" and "Every Curling Thing"
Leslee -- "Red Umbrella"
Tom Montag -- an installment of his "Morning Drive Journal"
Fiona Robyn - "Conversations with Poems"
Steve -- "Northeast Philadelphia and the Memorial Church of St. Luke"

I am grateful for all of my contributors' generosity. I am also grateful to have associated with some literary-approach-to-spirituality bloggers. All of my contributors are fine examples of such bloggers whether or not they would admit it. My association with them has been as satisfying to me as the golden age of journalism I enjoyed at Riverside Elementary School a hundred years ago.

The article "How I Screw Up the Literary Analysis Essay" first appeared in the Journal of the Virginia Writing Project, and I am grateful for its permission to republish it (with a few minor changes) here.

After comprehending the depths of my affinity for his snail photo, Dave Bonta kindly gave me carte blanche to use it on this site.  All other photographs in the site's heading columns are republished here under Creative Commons licenses that permit remixing and republishing with attribution. 

characters -- photo by Daniele Florio

freshman comp -- "Water Drops" by Diana Andreea Margarit

the martin sermons --  photo by Rodger Holtom

the reading arts --  photo by Jasoon

reviews --  photo by Elektra Noelani Fisher

ruminations --  photo by Elektra Noelani Fisher

verse --  photo by Dave Bonta

The upper two pictures in the "passages" column are by kemikore and are republished under a creative commons license.

The lower two pictures in the "passages" column are by Jasoon and are republished under a creative commons license.