105 Meadowlark Reader —

personal stories

written with heart

Hello, friends!

105 Meadowlark Reader shares our collective stories, experiences, viewpoints, perspectives—what it’s like to live in Kansas at this particular time in history.

These personal essays and true stories in 105 reveal our moments of doubt, of glory. They show our challenges and our victories.

Some authors invite us inside their childhood homes, introduce us to their families, their farms, their animals.

Some write about their darkest days, others take us on hilarious adventures.

Tracy and I are truly impressed with what writers submit to 105 Meadowlark Reader, our Kansas journal of creative nonfiction.

Below, we share brief excerpts from three essays, tiny glimpses inside this journal that we treasure so much.

If 105 is new to you, we’d love it if you would give it a try.

We have subscriptions available as well as single copies of 105. Many of our back issues are only $10.

Thank you.

We are so appreciative of our writers, so appreciative of our readers.

Cheryl

Subscribe or buy a single issue

Excerpts from “The Hard Ground” by Eric Kirsch:

“You wear a badge long enough and it doesn’t feel like a thing that’s yours. It’s something you borrow.

When I came home from the wars, it all came home with me too.

It hurt, still hurts, yet I got the better deal now in all this here ocean of prairie called Wabaunsee County. This is my post.”

***

“There’s a kind of stitch you make in the wounds of the world when you protect the small ones.

Like binding your own injury by closing someone else’s.

I reckon it’s the only real salvation we get in this life. Being useful to someone.

Every child I helped keep safe was one more person who could believe in the idea that what happened to them would never be okay, yet at least one person on this planet finally did something about it that mattered.”

“The Hard Ground” by Eric Kirsch

Issue #10, Work

Eric Kirsch, Wabaunsee County Sheriff

Excerpts from “A Loan of Uncertain Terms” by Julie Stielstra:

”I have seen the Universal Cat Distribution System at work over the course of many years, and in many places.

The Kansas branch office seems to have a particularly efficient and successful operation.

The first one was Smike.”

***

“His eyes were nearly gunked shut. We could not catch him. The next day, we found him stuck in the engine compartment of the truck, but when we tried to pry him out, he dropped straight down out of sight and scampered away.

But he kept showing up, and he sure kept eating.”

***

“I set up a crate with a pen around it, put food in it, and captured him when he ventured in. I held him struggling in my gloved hands.

He set his little teeth oh so gently against my knuckles, then collapsed against my chest, purring.

He needed so many meds I had to keep a spreadsheet. He was named for the tragic, sickly orphaned boy in Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby.”

“A Loan of Uncertain Terms”

by Julie Stielstra

Issue #12, Borrowed

(Available in November)

Julie Stielstra

Excerpts from “Logjam” by Dave Leiker:

“Randy crawled to the front of the canoe.

I slipped into the rear as we pushed off into the quick flow of muddy water.

Unskilled canoeists, the boat wobbled as we shifted weight left and right to gain equilibrium.

My water entrances are like that, moments of quick chaos and overcompensation until some stability is gained.

It’s not a promising audition for navigating a flooding Kansas River.”

***

“During my early years I worked as a stock boy in a tiny neighborhood grocery store. A very kind woman helped manage the store, kept the books, and took turns at the cash register.

One day her son was lost to the river. That night, I was told, she stood at the riverbank calling out his name.

That was half a century ago, but I still feel the dense, weighted sorrow of that time in my bones.”

”Logjam” by Dave Leiker

Issue #9, Luck