(These are excerpts--click on the title to view the whole piece!)

Coup de Thai
 
I couldn't get any more information out of her. If she had mentioned the word "coup," I probably would have thought there was a dove-attack or something, since my knowledge of government-related terms was, at that time, at a minimum.  
 
Nora Jean Bonner

 

Fate and Fortune
 
The best-known Triple Goddess of Fate in European mythology is the Greek Moira, or in the plural, the Moirae. These goddesses dealt collectively with individual threads of life. Their separate names, corresponding to their functions, are Clotho, the Spinner, who selected the Thread of Life and actually spun it; Lachesis, the Drawer of Lots, who measured the thread and evaluated its length and validity; and Atropos, whose name means "no turning aside," representing the inevitable end to life, who cut the thread and caused the death of the person who owned it.  
 
Tala Bar

 

High Fashion—Low (ehmann’s) Prices: A New York City Memoir
 
The apparel we found at Loehmann's may have been produced right down in lower Manhattan, back in those grubby Seventh Avenue factory showrooms; but the creations—ah, those creations, they were made in heaven! The glory of such luxurious garments, their sleek, their svelte, their swank, velvets, wools and cashmeres, satins and silks! The magic designs of these costumes foretold our future—just like the gypsy fortune tellers with their crystal balls who showed up each year at Bronx neighborhood carnivals!  
 
Julia Braun Kessler

 

When Your Brain Falls In Love
 
Like oxytocin, vasopressin encourages the formation of social bonds and is released during sex. However, while oxytocin primarily induces trust, vasopressin can induce territorial behavior and aggression in males.  
 
Anju Kanumalla

 

Okinawa 1946: Forgotten Underside of Victory
 
A familiar of country clubs and private schools, I was drafted into the U.S. Navy in June, 1944, just having turned eighteen. Since we lived in Winnetka, a lakeside suburb of Chicago, I learned Navy ways at Great Lakes Naval Training Center a few leagues north. The transition seemed easy. I don't remember being homesick, and I liked the Appalachian boys who were a large fraction of the inductees.  
 
David Cates

 

Posse Comitatus
 
After violating the act several times, members of Congress and the Press called them on it. The reply of President Bush and then-Attorney General Ashcroft was to call the law antiquated and a hindrance to the public good. The act's obscurity and the ignorance and distraction of the American public are leading to a major victory for those eroding our basic civil liberties. We must call attention to this law and its place in protecting our way of government.  
 
Michelle Hartman

 

Sensate
 
If you ever want someone on first sight, your body will conspire against you afterward. Memory stores the immediate attraction whole in every cell, an unfortunate DNA of neuronal lightning. From this you cannot recover, and from that point forward, your desire is pathological.  
 
Jennifer Trudeau

 

The Coma Room
 
Sometimes I hear a beeping noise coming from the other side. I'm told this is to alert the nurses when something goes wrong with one of the many things that keeps the comatose fed and alive. I sit there nervously waiting for someone to notice the beeping noise and hoping no one is slowing dying of anoxia.  
 
Memphis Saltos

 

One Evening, on a Tokyo Train
 
"I am so glad," she began, "so glad to see this. When I was young, it was unthinkable—the idea of having an American friend!  
 
Mary E. Whitsell

 

The Holy Virgin of the Underpass
 
Her physical presence on the concrete wall was easily explained. Runoff from the highway, water mixed with gas and oil and the aroma of money, trickled down the plain gray of the underpass walls, following the cracks like an old river tracing a familiar path through the mountains.  
 
Justin Ringsak