We Were Together
“Day by day and night by night we were together,—All else has long been forgotten by me.” -Walt Whitman, “Once I Pass’d Through a Populous City” Today marks my last post for The Common Reader;…
Michaella A. Thornton
Michaella A. Thornton’s writing has appeared in Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, New South, The Southeast Review, The New Territory Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, and a University of Missouri Press anthology, Words Matter: Writing to Make a Difference (2016). After graduating from the Missouri School of Journalism, Thornton interned with National Public Radio’sWeekend Edition Saturday and the Tucson Weekly. She earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Arizona. In 2018 she shared her “true, personal story about science” for the St. Louis Public Radio and the national storytelling podcast, The Story Collider.
By Michaella A. Thornton
In Deference to the Heat
When I lived in Tucson, Arizona over a decade ago, I realized summer in the Sonoran Desert is much like winter in the Midwest. A desert summer is a perfect time to stay indoors and wait for the harshness of the weather to pass. Instead of hot cocoa…
The Mother Church
A few years back, I went on a road trip to Nashville with a good friend (see “On the Huzzah”) to catch Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins at the Ryman Auditorium.
On the Huzzah
Perhaps many of us would benefit from taking a day off of work, driving two hours south on Interstate 44 with a dear friend, and putting a kayak into Huzzah Creek, a 35.8-mile sister tributary of the Meramec River, one of Missouri’s longest free-flowing waterways. The…
A Triptych of Fourth of Julys Past
Washington, D.C. Fourteen years before M1A1 Abrams tanks arrived by train from Fort Stewart, Georgia, I sat on the lawn of the National Mall with friends, excited to celebrate Independence Day at the nation’s capital. A summer spent interning for $7 an hour at National Public…
Exactly Enough Time
“Everything changed the day she figured out there was exactly enough time for the important things in her life.” -Brian Andreas Almost everyone who spies a mother with young children will remind her “to enjoy them while they are little; it goes by so fast.” Maybe…
Averting Disaster, Real or Imagined
The emergency ladder is not noticeable unless one squints at the side of the whitewashed farmhouse. The ladder is a series of two-by-fours, painted white and spaced and nailed just so onto the siding, to form an almost indiscernible ladder leading up to a second-story attic bedroom. The girl who…
“Outside, A Sun Strikes You Down”
Title after Paul Claudel’s “Heat of the Sun” We observe how climate change continues to prompt extreme weather events around the world. We take note of sea-level changes reported by Boaty McBoatface,…
St. Louis the Day After Winning the Stanley Cup
Is there anything as sweet as a city and its Cinderella hockey team the day after winning the Stanley Cup for the first time? As I drive down a major thoroughfare, driver after driver honks at fans decked out in yellow and blue; these particular fans are lined…
Despite Our Many Imperfections
The title of Thomas Wolfe’s 1940 posthumous novel came from the Australian-British journalist and writer Ella Winter, who asked Wolfe once, “Don’t you know you can’t go home again?” And while Winter and Wolfe are right, you cannot go home again, at least not the…
Gentleman Jack Is All That
Some have argued that channel surfing is dead, much like doorbells since many of us simply text “here” once we arrive. While the latter development is yet another casualty of technology marching on and our collective avoidance of unexpected visitors,…
The Way Some Young People Perish
This story, like many stories, centers on a brief and chance encounter. Meeting Sam and then reading about his demise made me wonder how communities like mine could better support and care for young people who may be struggling, who may sometimes make the devastating choice to end their life.