01 April 2021

26 - a celebration


Letters in the English alphabet. 
Black cards in a full deck and, 
conversely, 
red cards in a full deck. 
The atomic number of iron, count of protons and electrons but 
not its neutrons. 

President Teddy Roosevelt. 
Bones in the human foot. 
The "Old Enough to Fight, Old Enough to Vote" amendment or, 
ironically, 
"Prohibition" plus "Protection against Cruel and Unusual Punishment." 

Dimensions in bosonic string theory. 
An opal wedding anniversary. 
The numeric value of the Hebrew name of God in the Bible, which 
only appears once. 

Asteroid Proserpina.
Ganglions in the sympathetic system. 
Rhombicuboctahedron.



06 January 2021

postcard war: a stranger comes to town

"Pick an apocalypse, any apocalypse." 
~ John Gardner, from Grendel 

Early in the 2020 pandemic under travel restrictions and limitations on gatherings, my brother challenged me to a postcard war.  Game on. 

The rules are simple: the "winner" is the one who sends either the most audacious or highest quantity. I'm an overachiever. I try for both. 

I created this set with ink and pencil over found city images. Entitled "A Stranger Comes to Town," my work is inspired by the postcards of Steve McDonald, "Fantastic Cities," and the writings of author John Gardner, who taught that there are only two plots in all literature:

  1. one goes on a journey; and
  2. a stranger comes to town. 
I grew up in a military family that had moved 17 times by the time I was 13 years old, making me, at once, always on a journey and always the stranger. 






Rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond
Call me what you will...
~ Metallica, "Wherever I May Roam"

29 March 2020

new fiction: The Way the Sun Falls on a Threshold

We knew him since we couldn't remember when, but none of us knew how he lost his eye until Maxie Adeline asked him flat out the summer we picked berries for him.

~ from "The Way the Sun Falls on a Threshold," by Sherri H. Hoffman.

Read the complete story online at The Saturday Evening Post, Contemporary Fiction, March 27, 2020.

There was a time when I did not know how to live. Somehow I survived myself long enough to make a connection to other people who had also not known how to live until something changed in them. There are many stories out there about how people find their way out of hopelessness. My personal story isn't Uncle Emerson's, and yet, it is exactly the same. It bears that same surprising, private, ineffable moment when the universe shifts inside a person, and life forever after is made different by the possibilities that open, which could have never been previously anticipated or even imagined.

My life is like that. I got something different, for which I remain grateful. Every single day.

~ Sherri


"Dance until your bones clatter. What a prize
you are. What a lucky sack of stars."


~ from "At Last the New Arriving," by Gabrielle Calvocoressi