 All right. We had a little technical difficulty, but I think we can go ahead and get started. I'm going to let Carol Betancourt come in. I just did. And I'm going to officially welcome you all. So here we go. Hi, welcome everyone to our flash fiction open mic. Before we get started, I want to alert you that this event is being recorded. If you do not want your name or your image to appear on the recording, please turn your camera off and change your name to something else. My name is Taryn Edwards, and I am one of the librarians here at the mechanics Institute of San Francisco. For those of you unfamiliar with mechanics, we are an independent membership organization that houses a wonderful library, the oldest designed to serve the public in California. We're also a cultural event center and a world renowned chess club that is the oldest in the United States. Right now, due to the shelter in place, almost all of our activities are virtual, but I encourage you to consider becoming a member with us. We offer only $120 a year. And with that, you get to help our support, the support we offer to the literary and cultural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. Moderating tonight's event is a member of our writers community, Lizette Wanzer. She is an author, an editor, and a writing instructor for us and other local organizations like the Writers Grotto, the Fremont Adult School, and the Writing Salon. Her work has appeared in over 25 literary journals, books, magazines, and she is the recipient of four individual artist commission grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission. Thank you, Lizette, for offering to moderate this evening before she says a word. I want to tell you all that questions will be taken or feedback at the end of the event. You can also chat in the chat space, and we'll try and address whatever questions you might have at the end. Otherwise, thank you for coming tonight and thank you Lizette. Take it away. Thank you. Thanks, Erin. Welcome, everybody. Thanks for joining us on this Wednesday evening. To our open mic, we have, is it eight readers? We have lost Francie, unfortunately. Francie and Jean. Oh, okay. So six readers or seven now. I just want to go ahead and speak a little bit about flash fiction because it's a foreign that I teach and I write it a lot as well. And for some people who may be attending, they may not quite understand what it is. It goes by a number of different names. So flash fiction is one name. It also goes by sudden fiction, which is the name I use more frequently. It's also known as smoke long fiction, short shorts, skinny fiction and immediate fiction. And then there's another category called micro fiction and that's usually really small pieces 500 words or less. And sometimes they're even 300 words or less. So there are a number of different names that these kinds of pieces go by. In my mind, flash is fiction that exploits the limits of space. It exploits the space limitations that you have. So it makes the most of the brevity of the form. And I know for me, writing it has really taught me how to edit myself more closely and how to write more economically. I have to ask myself because I don't have the luxury of long introductory passages and exposition. I have to ask myself, does every sentence truly advance the narrative? Or is it just filler? Is it a necessary disposable discourse that I don't have room for in this space? So what it's done is it gets me in the habit of getting the most juice out of my verb and noun choices that I can. And one reason I want to get the most juice out of my nouns and verbs is because adverbs in general tend to leech the strength and potency from sentences in any prose piece. Even more so in flash fiction, as in poetry and as in prose poems. The other thing I like about flash is that it taught me and it still teaches me to appreciate the art of indirect suggestion. And that's also what I like to see when I'm reading it. If you write a lot of flash and you get accustomed to it, it will tune your ear. It will sharpen your observational powers. It will also hone your editing skills. When you first write the piece and you think it's done, you'll go through it a second and third time and you'll see things that you can take out that aren't advancing your narrative. It will instill discipline in you and it'll make you pay true attention to detail. Now, of course, it's still a story, after all. So conflict of some nature or some sort of tension has to be in the piece. It has to spur the narrative's movement from plot point to plot point. And most flash pieces are just one plot point and imply the weight of the rest. And then flash also still has the attributes that are basic to all stories. So characters who yarn and whose personalities are revealed in some way. One thing about flash is that these stories don't require resolution. They can have a cagey ending that either implies closure or they can end with a twist or a note of irony. The one mistake that I know many people make is that flash is for short attention spans and nothing could be further from the truth. It's more like haiku or Tibetan tantric poems. So haiku are not very long. Tantra are not very long, but you can hardly just tear through them on one reading, whip the page over and then just casually move on to the next, right? You have to digest what you've read. Readers have to bring a bit of a meditative strategy to the poems that they're reading. And they should be willing to read it more than once to obtain the full sense. So, you know, longer fiction spends more time with characters and settings. Flash is just as interested in characters and just as interested in settings, but the narrative is just moving too fast for the writing to focus on those elements for very long. So the emotions are condensed, but it is definitely not written or intended necessarily for shorter attention spans. In fact, with flash, sometimes a reader is required to do more work, which is also frequently the case with poetry. So just because flash looks simpler on the page doesn't mean that it is. I know for me it's much tougher for me to write flash than it is for me to write a longer piece of fiction or novella. Also, when you're reading or listening to one, as you'll be doing tonight, it often takes a lot of thinking to understand what you think you heard, or if you're reading it what you think you saw on the page. So the challenge really is to tell a complete story in which every word is actually essential. And you're peeling away the frills and lace that you might see in longer pieces until you're left with nothing except really the cold hard core nuclear core of a story. And a story that as a result of its intensity leaves the reader or in this instance the listener with an emotional experience that persists after your clothes. So when I'm writing flash these are the questions were some of the questions that I asked myself when I'm writing it. What are the grades of meaning? May I demand from a phrase? How much heavy lifting? Can I cope from a word? Have I chosen the precise right word? How much free can I milk from a sentence? Or how much weight can this one sentence carry? Is the writing muscular and clean? And is the writing lean but still comprehensible? So I use subtle reference and indirect implications to make the most of a limited space. So many people will ask, well, how long is a flash fix in the story? And that depends on, it really depends on who you ask. So in my classes, it's 1000 words or less. Many other places will say 900 or less. I've seen between 600 and 1000 words. I've seen a couple of flash contests that say 1200 words or less. And to me, 1200 is a bit long. That crosses over into being a regular length fiction story. So it does depend on who you ask. But regardless of what the word count definition is, what editors who are reading those pieces are looking for, they're all looking for meticulous attention to language and close particular attention to diction and rhythm and poetic devices you may have borrowed, such as alliteration. You need to walk this tightrope between underwriting and overwriting. And that's actually something that becomes clearer as you're doing your revision process. So repetition, word choice, syllabic continuity or discontinuity all have a heightened importance in flash. And the last thing I'll say is that also, unlike typical short stories, flash also often begins in the middle of things. So the opening sentence or paragraph makes it clear that the reader has entered or intruded upon an ongoing situation. And the first sentence is often a major hook. So I've got some examples of this type of beginning from some of my favorites. This one is from Jerome Sturm. I get bad news in the morning and faint. That's Jerome Sturm from Morning News. He and his lover were down to the last few T cells and arguing over who was going to die first. That's Kim Adonicio from Her Piece Survivors. And this one from Leonard Michaels. Well, my uncle Mo dropped dead of a heart attack. I became expert in the subway system. And that's from his flash piece called Murderers. So just a few examples of some of my favorite opening lines of flash pieces. And I think I will now shut up. And we can go ahead and listen to our open mic folks. Taryn, anything else that you want to say before I introduce our first reader? Just that. One of our readers has rejoined us. So we'll just keep with the schedule as planned. And we can see it will be number three. And there we go. All right. So our first reader tonight is Shane Race Lieglund. And Shane Race has been a member of the McHenison Stute Library since 2015. So he's a fellow member. He currently resides in Alameda. And he's got an upcoming novel. May we one day pick all the shrapnel from our hearts. And that will be released October 15th this year by Tailwinds Press. And he's going to be reading his piece called Our Imperfect. Thank you very much. It's been a long time since I've done a reading. So I am very nervous. I'm very happy that it's hot. So I could blame that on me since I'm sweating instead of, you know, my nerves. All right. Our Imperfect. After breakfast, my wife and I sit at the kitchen table. In front of each of us is a pile of pills far too large for far too large for a couple in their 30s. The pills I take help regulate my blood sugar, lower my blood pressure, etc. My wife watches smiling and idly picking at the bandage on her finger as I swallow them all and wash them down with diet soda. Then she asked me about a hat, a red hat with a leopard print band. She said she wants to wear it today and believe she left it in the bedroom closet. I tell her that this is nonsense that I thought in the hallway closet just that morning. She asked me to check just to make sure. I walk down the hall to our bedroom, close the door behind me and count to 20. When I return to the kitchen, she has turned on the radio and now bounces in her seat along to the music. She is wearing the red hat. All her pills are gone. In our six years of marriage, my wife's pride still doesn't allow me to watch her take her pills. In our first year of marriage, I was terrified that she was dumping them. On days I was alone, I often took the trash out to the garage, slit open the bag and sifted through it looking for the flash of little white pills. I never found any. I have grown to trust her and I have also grown to enjoy our daily game of distractions. As we leave the house, each headed to our separate jobs, we see a group of children at a bus stop. They laugh and shove each other playfully. There is joy and longing in my wife's face. But when she notices me looking at her, she drops her gaze to the ground. Several hours later, my wife calls me at work. Over the phone, my wife says that she just read an article about diet soda, how it was bad for you and it could put you at a risk for diabetes. I laugh and tell her it was too late for that. She also tells me that she decided to throw away the cutting board. She had cut her finger quite badly two days prior while chopping green peppers. And although we had disinfected the board three times with bleach and water, it was after all made of wood and wood is porous. I ask if she is tired. She says yes a little why I say no reason. No reason I say that I love her and we'll see her after work. Before I hang up, she reminds me of my quarterly screening. After the phone call, I go into the break room, pour out the rest of my diet soda and recycle the bottle. The screening does not take long. A medical assistant swabs my gums and I wait for the results reading a magazine 10 years out of date. 10 years out of date. My wife is very pleased that the test came back as usual negative. We go out to dinner to celebrate. Then we hurry home to make love. She falls asleep immediately afterwards. I knew that she was tired. I had been on the other side of the bathroom door the night before as she cried until four in the morning. It had been my fault. I had brought up children again. That there was always artificial insemination, but with a low viral load and me being untrue vata made the risks to me almost negligible if we tried to conceive the natural way. Her response was the same one in four that. Even with a low viral load, there was a one in four chance that the child would end up inheriting her disease one in four. I get up out of the bed and head to the bathroom. There I dispose the condom and nitrile gloves and a bin we use for everything that touches her fluids. I sit on the edge of the bathtub and stare at myself in the mirror. What do I say? How do I make her understand that a 75% chance is a pretty damn good odds. And even if we hit that one in four, there was a 100% chance that we would love that child unconditionally. That if we mixed our two imperfect bloods, there was a chance we could make a perfect human being. I go back into the bedroom and call and crawl into bed next to her and my touch my wife rolls over and wraps her arms around me. She remembers something in her sleep. I close my eyes and drift off to join her. Thank you very much. I believe you on mute for that. I said, thank you, you didn't look nervous reading that at all. Not at all. Nicely done. All right. Moving on to our next reader, Linda Hartman. There she is. Linda Hartman has worked as a critical care emergency room and pediatric ICU and transplant nurse in San Francisco for 15 years before working as a scientist at Genentech, which is in South San Francisco near the beautiful Marina there. She worked on the first approved targeted antibody for cancer and went on to become director and senior director for other biotech companies, developing departments of pharma co vigilance medical affairs and does symmetry overseeing infrastructure and mentoring a physician pharmacist and other clinical staff while working on the development of other medical and cancer therapeutics, including vaccines. So after retiring, she took up creative writing and now she's president of the CWC and Mount or the California writers club in Mount Diablo Mount Diablo branch and Linda is going to be reading tonight. A piece called mother sent us to our rooms. Thank you very much for that. I to have an actually done flash before and I got a lot out of it. So I'm going to sit down and rewrite it really fast here before I read. Excuse me. So I'll do that afterwards. It'll be much better next time around. So mother sent us programs. Plagued Plagued past protections, protests, police perpetrations, parades blankie parties painful, provoking the turbine, pessimistic, poisonous and perforated. It was March 1, 2020. She was on the news on the web. She called me for best best friend. I'm serious. She said the guy died. The first death here in the United States with it. If what you're saying is true, it's traveling because that's what people do. But it's got to be human spread to because the guy said he wasn't at the market or anybody who was at the market and or wasn't with anybody who was at the market and you harm. The two of them huddled in the weeks to come like CIA agents sharing everything they could find out about it. And it was just 12 days later that the Health Department and Contra Costa put a shelter in place order for all the residents. The two could no longer meet in person without breaking orders or risk getting a misdemeanor for it. Both though had been out with their masks on and their gloves on before masks were even mandatory. They needed to stock up the shelter in place for as long as possible. It's not a worst and you will always be pleasantly surprised at the outcome was Heather's motto. She told my name. I build a bomb shelter if I could, but I'm a peaceful person. I don't depend off the gun loading people, the gun toting people who eventually come from my survival rations and well, I'm not going to get a gun just to do that. But he's got to eat. So just take the food already. I'd be the first to say just tell me if it came to cannibalism. Comparing daily stories of shopping versus older inverses and getting them wiped down and you from the dirty zone to the clean zone with each other dates and balance and levity to their otherwise newly sheltered in one style. Each retired they both kept up the family and other parts of the United States and funds in other countries where things were different. They've been plenty to worry about. Then came the murder of George Floyd, the black man in Minneapolis, loaded by white policemen on show for the world to you. Have you been watching money? Look, I don't even know what to say. This has got to stop. Is that all you got money? No. You don't even call me. No, I don't want to say I'm just so sorry. It's not fair. It's, it's wrong. I don't get it either and I'm worried as hell now. What's going to happen? I don't speak up. You going out? I got to. You coming? I don't know. Yeah, I know you too, but somebody's got to take care of you if you get served for some jail. Those are my peeps, Heather. I got to. You're not my peeps too, mom. I don't blame you or anybody for going wide over this. The timing sucks, though, but no timing is a good timing. So many convergences and factors right now, you know. I know. I'll be in touch. But be careful in the area. Where are you mosque and stay out of. No need to turn up. The next week's for crop with more ridiculous coded remarks from the executive branch. The device it's. It was infuriating to the two friends trying to cope with others who had come down with the disease both far and new. As the election was drawn closer, they were doing to the news like junkie. They were doing the same thing. They were doing the same thing. While filling out postcards, zooming with friends and family and taking themselves out for the occasional meditative walks. So separately. To rebound with mother nature and enter a better. Seriously, why are things so bad and not. I'm sorry. I hear from my friends in Europe and then look, Heather, don't you really get it? It's mama. It's doing this because we need it. I'm sorry, but I think we lost him. We're sheltered in right. Heather, you see. Mother nature has sent to our rooms. This planet and the people here. One big race. We're not supposed to come out until we can respect each other enough to stop arguing about wearing masking grocery stores. Thank goodness it's mandated here. You and I stopped seeing each other. Right. I don't love and I don't respect. People go from home now. We stopped traveling. People are losing their jobs in their businesses. There's less pollution as a result. Now am I right? The ozone is happier. Hopefully we'll see beauty in every color of every flower. But every walk will have no meaning because we can. We can walk. We can walk. We can walk. We can walk. We can walk. They should be able to appreciate all the colors of the ice cream. Am I right? Why all the craziness and judging this over skin color? Why isn't the ozone doing more? Whether due to ignorance or laziness or greed or need, it's still a responsibility to ensure that no matter what help is offered, domestic or foreign, we must find a way to vote in November and begin our journey by planning for it now. But it's the elderly and the prisoners and the people of color and the poor. So it's living in those crowded circumstances that it's affected the most. Is it the news? You all the junkies? That's right. Well now you're thinking. Sounds sort of like genocide, don't you think? Well now that's an awful thing to say. And it's an awful way to feel, too. So, you gotta hope that they don't have to come in trouble and get rid of the magical things coming from the over. Get rid of the device to miss and find some commonalities. Call the bad trouble for what it is and stop the cover-wise. You gotta be willing to get into some good trouble. Can you be? Who's trying to notice? I think it's called getting open downs. Help those who need it the most. This problem is systemic and it isn't getting fixed from the time. One more minute. Sounds to me like Mom is trying to tell us to stop being so selfish. I think I'm gonna go and call a senior. And then I'm gonna call a friend. I haven't checked in yet for a while. See if I can drop some soup off the room. I think I feel like I just got a spot somewhere. But do you think we can get together and make a list tomorrow? Thank you. Thank you, Linda. Do you have a theater background? I'm sorry. Do you have a theater background? No. No? Oh, okay. Well, that was my kind of first class and did a theater background. Sister keeps telling me I should go in. It could be fun. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Francie Covington. Hi, Francie. Hello, I made it. Yay. Yay, that's right. Yay. Francie is a retired TV producer of magazine and public affairs shows. I'm gonna mute myself. She's currently working on a collection of short stories. Her personal essay called, Uneasy Lies the Head of the Black Mom appeared in Ms. Magazine last month. Congratulations. Thank you. And Francie will be reading for us. Oh, she's reading that piece. Excellent. Yes. Uneasy Lies the Head of the Black Mom which appeared in Ms. Magazine. Take it away. Okay, thank you, Lisbeth. I listened in the night for the return of my son who was out with his friends for the evening. I don't worry about his non-black friends. They're congenial, working hard at their first jobs post college, just as he is. I worry about those who don't know my son, never had a chat with him. I worry that his insistence on his right not to be hassled, arrested or beaten by police without cause will be seen in and of itself as an act of aggression. I fear any interaction he might have with police officers who lean more toward the warrior code than their public service mandate. As the daughter of a black man, the widow of a black man and the mother of a black man, I have lived in a state of anxiety about the safety of the men in my life for my entire life. I've had to teach my son that whenever he goes into a store, even if it's raining outside, he must slide his hoodie off his head and leave it off until he leaves the premises. He has to take his hands out of his pockets while waiting for the cashier to ring him up. He must put his purchases in a bag, not walk out of the store with them in his hands and always, always get a receipt and do not discard the receipt until he gets home. I tell him that people are blind by suspicion of all black males over the age of five. They can't tell the robbers from the fraternity guys, the shoplifter from the man who doesn't want a bag because he plans to immediately drink the bottle of water and eat the chips he's just purchased. But someone might challenge him calling him a thief. I remind him that he has to think not only for himself but for people who will assume he's a criminal or just up to no good because that's what they've been told. You'll be considered dangerous until you're well into your 70s. About the police, I say, make sure your phone is on and fully charged before you leave the house. If you see the flashing lights of a police vehicle behind you, activate your phone, pull over and place your hands on the steering wheel. If you're a passenger in the car, at all times keep your empty hands where the police can see them. Again, make sure your phone is recording. He says, mom, you worry too much. I think, I hope I haven't left anything out. There is such a thing as beautiful loving sons like mine. Just as there are such things as tasers, lethal weapons, centuries old assumptions and racism, racism handed down casually and yes, sometimes intentionally by millions of other moms and dads. I know that after he's received a graduate degree, married and had children of his own, even then I will worry because his blackness will not have faded. When the downstairs door finally opens and the hush steps to his room recede down the hallway, I take my first deep breath of the night relieved that at least on this night, my son's name will not be preceded by hashtag. Thank you. Thank you, Francie. Thank you. That was extremely powerful. Thank you. And sobering. Thank you. Right, moving on to our next reader who is Mitchell Toes. I hope I said it correctly. Mitchell lives, it is. Mitchell lives and writes Lakeside in Manitoba, Canada. His writing has appeared in a variety of literary journals, oh, and anthologies. He is currently working on in a drastic art book containing photography and short fiction. As well as a third edit on his novel, which is called Mulholland in Hard Bar. He says to follow him on the trails, the water across the winter ice, or more conveniently at, I think this is his website, Michelanius.com or Facebook, LinkedIn, Goodread and Twitter. And Mitchell will be sharing with us tonight his piece called Freight Trains and Jet Plains. Mitchell. Thank you, Lizette. I built the writing room for myself during the pandemic. I wanted to have some outdoor work, be productive, and get up to my collarbone and something that took my mind off the talking heads on TV. Only five by 12, the addition occupies a shady spot attached to the gable end of our repurposed boathouse, now a not so big Lakeside screen porch. The boathouse was built originally in 1975, a mini-me to the 1950 cottage. Both were built with lumber salvaged with care from decommissioned Canadian national railroad boxcarts. The reclaimed lumber is all clear Douglas fir, rare now and still strong, straight and warm to the touch. Having removed two sliding patio doors in the cottage, I put all four glass panels into the tiny addition as fixed windows. Complimented by an old oak door, my little retreat is well-fenestrated and the light, fandango. I have a view of the lake and it can see me too with its infinite number of twinkling summer eyes. I sit behind the glass, separated from the boreal riparian zone, a low-lying fringe of willow, flowering dogwood, popular and shy lady slipper. I'm cut off, but still a part of the forest community. It's not unlike those clear flat screens that have sprung up like plexiglass weeds in stores and banks and even at your favorite hole in the wall pizza joint. It's a good place, my addition is, to write quiet but for the sound of rushing popular leaves in the wind, a dappled light all around with the live feel of sawn wood embracing me in a way in that no plastic, no metal, no composite could. The fur boards may not have a heartbeat or flowing sap but they nonetheless feel like kin in the family of living things, especially here in a glade green and warm with sunlight. I inhale a whiff of milkweed tended by an eschidril of bees and I set the CD player on random. You can't jump a jet plane like you can a freight train rings out, filling the little shed and my head with wonder and all manner of thoughts that criss and cross like contrails that until recently left their chalky residue on the blue dome above me. I sit still as a cloud. I listen as latefoot repeats the phrase. My heart is filled and bursting and I feel sad but the lonesome beauty of it sweeps me up. Man, I love that song I say. And I'm pretty sure I hear a chorus of tamarack pine reply, us too. That night I listened to the pulse of the lake, a light breeze keeping a slapping beak going, echoing up from the sand shore. I toss up the cupboard to feel the air on my bare legs and wonder about that verse about a freight train and a jet plane. I think of the sky, blue today as it was over my little league baseball games from 50 some years ago. The ashy gray is washed out now because the planes are grounded and it's blue like it used to be. Blue like it bloody well means it. Sure, we all need those jet planes, there's no doubt but it's nice not to have smoke and soot and poisonous confetti littering the sky. And I think of the people at home with families and monopoly and katana and lunch is ready and let's plant a garden. I'll be damned if I don't hear the unmistakable clang of a ringer in a backyard horseshoe pitch. A talisman not hung over a door but executing three and a half somersaults through the barbecue scented air of a 2020 wool. You can't jump a jet plane like you can a freight train. I sing aloud in my 60 square foot time capsule. Tumbling through the void like I was John Glenn and the world's COVID hiatus was space uncluttered by earth junk in slowly eroding orbit. Maybe the technology and the mad consumption of kitschy trash that arrives at our front doors by whirring drone is not exactly the normal that we should be so goddamn interested in returning to. Maybe the true blue sky and figuring out math in our kids grade six textbook and darning a sock is the next life balance article we can read on LinkedIn. Yeah, maybe that's what Lightfoot had in mind back in 66. Back when technology was just beginning to be an omnipresent unrelenting source of interference blocking us from our own humanity. Maybe the Codgers in front of my hometown post office had it right and the old ways were the best. And maybe we don't need, do not absolutely have to have a three car garage stuffed like chipmunk cheeks with BPA and chlorine disguised as all manner of camouflage painted plastic giga's that promise to make our lives better. Of course, maybe this apparent reawakening of nature could just be a ruse and we're all fucking gonna die of the coronavirus. If so, I'll go down swinging, but in a different way. I'll learn from the bowl, low gear we are in right now and slow down. Feel the rain on my face. Pick myself up, find my friends, hold them close, build my life around family. Live simple. Maybe I can once again pound the nails out of a hunk of ancient wood and reuse it honoring the incredible chain of natural events that locked the sun into it in the form of carbon before my mom's great grandma was born, before microplastic existed, before unexpected extinctions, nutrient depleted soil and before that pile of empty plastic water bottles as big as Mount Robson was something we had created and no one knows exactly why. My thanks to the Mechanics Institute. Thank you. That was a very sensory laden piece, which I love that. I love having the five senses on as many pages as possible. Thank you. Moving on. Our next reader is Simon Menkis. Is Simon here? I am, I'm right here. Oh, okay. Simon is a writer whose stories are as much about the journeys his characters take as the goals they achieve. He has just completed Cushland, a novel about a conservative young man from Georgia who inherits part ownership in an LA cannabis dispensary. Based out of LA, Simon practices karate, shodokan, shodokan? Oh, shodokan, yes, a little bit of shodokan. All right, tennis and accounting in his spare time. Yes. Simon is going to read for us, I love this title, coffee and COVID. Madison's and my favorite coffee shop closed during the pandemic. This is what happened when we decided to give a damn. My name is Austin Charles Hardy. I'm 16 and I live in Oak Cove, not far from San Francisco. My new girlfriend, Madison, and I had started playing tennis twice a week at the municipal courts. After playing, we'd get coffee at perk up where we had our first date and sit at their tables outside since inside seating isn't allowed. Perk Up is owned by Pan, who's in his 20s. Whenever we'd walk in, Pan would announce, well, hello Madison and Austin, like we were royalty. And he always remembered Maddie loves lattes and I love iced blended mochas. Four days ago though, we went there and it was dark inside. A handwritten note taped to the door said closed due to coronavirus. Today around lunchtime, I got a text from Maddie. I can't stand it anymore. We have to find out what happened to Pan. Meet me in 10 minutes with your skates on. I walked to where our two streets intersect and she was already there. She fixed me with her large gray blue eyes. Where's your skates? Don't know I said shaking my head. They're not where I put them. She tossed her curly brown hair and you're late. I stared at her. Maddie can get testy when she's upset. She grabbed my bicep and leaned into me. I'm sorry, Austin. It's just that I told my parents Pan closed because of the coronavirus and they looked at me like and your point is? Yeah, I know. I told my parents too. Buck was like, I read that 50 businesses that have closed here in the last five months, some pretty successful before COVID. Interesting. Maddie frown. Your dad said, interesting? I nodded. At least my mom was like, I'm sorry you lost your favorite place, sweetheart. Your mom's cool. The truth was tons of places had closed in Oak Grove like the gyms, movie theaters and a bunch of restaurants. And we didn't know whether they'd open one day or be closed forever. What if Oak Cove never had another movie theater ever again? How crazy would that be? I walked as Maddie slowly skated and we made our way to the quiet end of Main Street near the courts. It's just that everyone seems to be, I don't know, numb, Maddie said. Yeah, like they're in shock or something or they don't care. Maddie frowned. I don't wanna be like that. That's why we have to find Pan, see what happened to him. We came to perk up. A small pile of mail, lay inside on the floor by the door. Maddie sighed, their phone just rings. I wish we knew where he lived. Wait here, I said. I walked around one side of the building and searched the alley for something long and skinny. I found an old coat hanger. I'm lucky that way. I could always find odd, helpful shit. At the front of the cafe, I made a hook with the coat hanger and stuck it under the door, dragging out each envelope. One envelope was from the state of California. You're not going to open that, are you? Maddie whispered and nodded her blue eyes big like spring swimming holes. Gotta break eggs to make omelets. I ripped open the envelope and pulled out a statement of information form, listing Pan Jen as owner with an address 10 blocks away. Austin, you're brilliant. I stuffed the paper in my pocket and slid the other mail back under the door. Maddie grabbed my hand, come on. We found the address on the form and walk, skated up to an old eight unit apartment building knocking on Pan's door. Pan, Maddie called, are you in there? Pan appeared at the side of the building and stopped six feet away from us. He had a mask on and his dark eyes were wide and his eyebrows raised. We quickly put our masks on too. Madison and Austin, Pan said, why are you guys here? I showed him the form. Someone taped this on your door, I said, lying like a criminal. It looked important, so we brought it to you. My mom, who's totally against lying, says white ones are okay if they help people. Maddie nodded vigorously like a bobble head after a dozen lattes. Pan glanced at the form. You guys wanna come around back for a moment? He didn't look like he wanted us to, but that's how good a host he is. Sure, Maddie said, Pan led us to a rear yard with a wood picnic table. A big man and a mask sat at the table and says back to us. He turned around. It was Buck. Mr. Hardy, Maddie squeal. These are the kids you were talking about? Pan asked Buck. Dad, what are you doing here? I asked, shocked. My dad stood up. I'm starting an opportunity fund with some friends. I knew you loved perk up, so I had the Chamber of Commerce connect us. What brings you two here? Buck's hair looked messed up and I noticed one knee of his jeans was torn. I sidestepped his question. What happened? I asked pointing to his jeans and where's your car? He gestured to some inline skates nearby. My skates thought I'd give these a try since you and I wear the same size too. He shrugged. I had a little spill. After the fuss he and my mom always made, I couldn't help myself. Geez, dad, I shook my head. No pads or helmet. Buck just stared at me with a guilty expression. And that's how Pan reopened perk up. My dad's new group became partners with him and invested some money. Cool, right? Now, if only I can get him excited about owning a movie theater. Thank you. That was hilarious. Thank you, Simon. A little YA story about the pandemic. I loved that. Thank you. All right, we are now up to Cindy Zickmund. And I don't know if she is here. Oh, there she is. Cindy's essays have been published by the literary traveler in the current issue of Magnolia Review due out this month. She was a creative nonfiction editor for Q Literary Magazine during 2018 and 19 and she's currently a contributing writer for the Southern Review of Books. Her day job, she is the competitive intelligence manager at ServiceNow and she lives with her husband and two rescue pups in Woodside. Cindy is going to be reading for us today a piece called Release All Claims. Cindy? Thank you, Lizette. I enjoyed your lecture earlier on and I wished I had heard of it a couple of weeks ago. Release All Claims. On Tuesday, January 28th, 2020, my cell phone rang at 9.30 a.m. It was my manager. Reports of my software company's annual layoff had already appeared on layoffs.com. The event started in Asia traveling faster than the coronavirus, infecting its way to Palo Alto. For the past year, my boss had promised me a promotion. Said he was working on my behalf. Said he thought my work was invaluable and his meetings were better focused when I attended. I paused a moment, took a breath, answered the phone. Are you driving? My boss of four years said no. Are you in a safe, quiet place? Yes. We're having a reduction in force and I'm afraid you're impacted. He said before residing a border plate of legal language so fast it was clear he was well rehearsed in executing layoffs. This action is final. He said, as if I were about to beg. After nine and a half years at the company in a litany of accomplishments, I was dismissed without a thank you unlike how they treat employees who quit. Many get parties. Please check your email for the legal forums he said. I'm unfriending him on Facebook, I thought. As I thanked him, hung up and checked my email. Subject, very important information. Attachment, release all claims. I agree to compromise, resolve and settle any dispute I have against the company regarding my termination of employment. I understand that if I agree to the terms of this involuntary separation, I will be awarded a lump sum severance. I agree that this release constitutes a full and complete waiver of claims, wrongful discharge, unfair business practices, emotional distress, claims alleging discrimination, harassment or violation of equal opportunity laws, or I will not be entitled to my severance money. Over the past year, six friends in my over age 50 group were let go from Silicon Valley companies. They are now retired by the corporations where they spent their livelihoods, also without a farewell party. In the 1980s, when I started work in high tech, companies offered age-appropriate workers early retirement before cutting anyone. I still remember the joy in my older colleagues' faces when they realized they could choose to retire early. I agree to hold harmless the company and everyone related to it, or I will not be entitled to the severance money. I will agree that I will not divulge the terms of this agreement to anyone I'm not related to or is not my legal representation. Colleagues contacted me, wanted to know if the rumor was true. But I dedicated smart, hard-working employee with dismissed. They told me about other victims, entire groups cut. The survivors were more upset than me, but I should have been more worried. My husband was laid off the fire week from a company where he had worked for 17 years. He had eased off on a call with my boss. When I hung up, he looked like a person who has seen his future in the soup kitchen line. We went for a walk to shake off the anxieties twirling in the pits of our stomachs. We counted the months of severance pay, and then the invoices for the recovery bill, recurring bills, vacation plans to cancel, and the never-ending home repair list. We contemplated the absurdity of health insurance being tied to employment. We could make it through July. This is before we knew the pandemic would take hold midway to summer, slowing the job market, and everything else. I'd agree that this is not an admission by the company of any wrongdoing under any law or otherwise. I agree that I will not directly or indirectly say or do anything that would disparage or reflect negatively on the company, or I will be sued. On my first day of work at the company, I signed a leave of contract sandwiched between the welcome of board notice and free lunch coupons, finding me to at will employment. The company could terminate me for any reason given proper notice. On this day of dismissal, I felt betrayed by an inequitable agreement. I felt angry at my boss relying about my career potential. I felt targeted by the head of my business unit who systematically eliminated long-term employees, replacing them with his acquaintances. I felt outraged at the company for ignoring the nepotism and classifying the action as just business like no humans were involved in the decision. Surprisingly, I felt vindicated for the sleepless nights spent wondering whether I would be terminated in this round or next or next. But most of all, I felt relieved. By signing below, I agreed to accept this agreement and receive my severance money. I signed the release, took the money, and found another job. Thank you, Cindy. Okay, and I believe we're down to Chen Yu. And I know I saw her earlier. There she is. Yeah. Dr. Chen Yu is a bilingual poet, graphic novelist, and scientist. She's the author of the award-winning memoir, Little Green, Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, published by Simon & Schuster, and that is a memoir written in free verse. She is also the author of a historical graphic novel in progress, which is under contract to McMillan, it looks like. And her website is www.Chenyu.org. And today, Chen Yu was going to be reading for us her story called The Pink Balloon. Thank you, Seth. Thanks to the Mechanic Institute Library term for organizing this event. So I'm just gonna read my short piece, The Pink Balloon. The first time when father told us about his childhood, he say that when he was 11, after eight years of war, the Japanese surrendered. The day the news came, the city erupted into celebration. In a crowd drunk with joy, he saw a giant pink balloon rising above the ancient city wall by Yangtze River. Telling the story, his eyes glowed with a light rising and expanding like the pink balloon. It was New Year's Eve, father had just come back from his re-education in the countryside. He was gone for eight years. We children did not know him until the light of his pink balloon began to shine upon us that day. I was also 11 then, secretly believed that I could make it, the pink balloon stay high and above, always glowing for father and us all. I set out to work. Winning mass competitions, being the champion students in our city, going to the best university of the country in the capital. As the years go by, I saw that balloon rising higher and expanding in father and everyone's eyes in our family. Each New Year's Eve, father told the story as we gathered around the banquet that he, our mother and grandma, spent days preparing with the rationed food and extra allowances of meat, fish and eggs for the new year that my older brother, Gego, little sister, Meimei and I stood in different lines of shops for hours to buy. One day I felt I could change the world for the better so that the balloon could always stay above, for us all, our whole family and for our whole nation. I marched in demonstration with my fellow students. The whole country cheered us on for the pink balloons we all saw in the sky until tanks rolled in and bullets were fired and all the balloons were gone. I came home. We stood in the dark. There was nothing up on the sky. Father did not mention the balloon for years. It took me a long time to look again along. Marriages happened. Grandchildren were born and raised. Marriages went awry. Money was made or lost. Back and forth, hopes and losses came and went in different shapes. A few years ago, father began to forget what he had for breakfast five minutes ago and if he had taken his medicine and many other things. In his forgetfulness, his face became rosy and some roots of his gray hair grow dark. He began to smile at whatever happened in our family. Good or bad and just say, oh, good, good. Good. Last years, last new years, if we all managed to come home during dinner, father suddenly glowed and said, when I was 11, the Japanese surrendered. A giant pink balloon rose above the city wall. I smiled as if seeing the balloon in the sky with him. Yes, father, what a day it must have been. Thank you. Aw, what a touching tribute. Thank you. Thanks. And that brings us to the end of the list that I have unless someone else has joined us, Karen. No, we did have one person duck out so we now have more time to chat. Thank you so much, all of our readers. Thank you for your timeliness as well and for sharing your work. It takes courage to do. For sure. Does anyone have any comments or anything they'd like to say? You can unmute yourself and. I'll speak and I just wanna say thank you to the Mechanics Institute, Taryn Yu. And I especially wanted to say, Lizette, you're a wonderful moderator. You're very warm, you're very kind. You find a nice thing to say beforehand to make us feel more comfortable. And then when we're done, you have something wonderful to say afterwards. So I just wanna tell you that I really enjoyed working with you on this. Thank you. Yes, you can learn a lot from Lizette. She has a class coming up. And I forget the date on that. September 12th. September 12th, very, very, Lizette is a repeat teacher at Mechanics Institute and one of the writers that I respect the most out of all of the ones that I know, which is wrong. I'd like to find out about that class because I'm sure I could use a little more support. Thank you, Lizette. I'll send you the link. Are you going to do a flash fiction on the 12th? No, it's a professional development class about writing your artist statements. Oh, very good. Because writers need artist statements too, not just visual artists. Yes. And I just wanna say completely agree with Simon what he had to say, that you're very easy to work with, answering our questions before we got here tonight and also tonight. Thank you so much for the intro to flash fiction as well, because I think it's really gonna be making me better as I walk out here as soon. I got something very wonderful from you. Good, yeah, that makes me happy. If you can get that much in a few minutes from somebody, it's like, that's gotta be a really good teacher. Thank you. And Taryn just put a link to the artist statement class, which is on September 12th. I'm not teaching flash fiction anymore this year. I had taught it earlier this year. I'm teaching Lyric essay next, but I will return to flash fiction probably next year. Okay, I have a meeting on the 12th for like three and a half hours. So, do you know what time it is on the 12th? 11 to three. That's a bummer. That's the next one. Yeah, she teaches that class. I think you've taught it two or three times now. So, she'll be back and she'll be back to do other things too. I don't have meetings every day. Oh gosh, don't we all? Not every day, so I could move in somewhere. Yeah, that was awesome. And I really enjoyed all the other readers. I have to say that was just incredible. What an array of topics and readers and it was so much really, really fun. I loved it. Good, I'm so glad. Thank you for having the event and hosting us. You're very welcome. And I, Mechanics Institute, are super proud of all of you. And I hope that you can, I hope you learned from the experience. Yes, I wanted to say thank you as well and let people know that I have taken one class with Lizette. And she is, she's not only warm, but during her classes she gets hot too. So, I'll do you now. I do, oh yes. For a while since I've seen you in action, Lizette. I don't know what she's talking about. If you have an opportunity, do take a class with her. She's very encouraging and very knowledgeable, so. And I had a great time when I finally arrived at the party. I'm glad you were able to get in. Yes, and I'm glad I didn't miss any readings because that would have been, that would not have made me happy at all. And thank you, Taryn, for hanging in there with me. You know, knocking on that door for me. So fucking dead-end. I knew we'd get you in here somehow. Well, thank you. At least I didn't have to come in through the transom. I can use that word because, you know, certain people don't know what you're talking about when you mention the transom, so. Oh, we got them in at every door at Mechanics Institute. Yes, that's true. Because I'm also a Mechanics Institute groupie, so. That's good. We need all the groupies we can get, and we appreciate it. Well, I want to thank both of you again for this really fun event. And also it was great to listen to all of the other writers. It's the Zoom readings become so important during our time. It's really hard. We have to stay connected. Yeah. I just also want to mention that I have another. Yes. So Taryn just. I'm on it. With her and the Mechanics Institute Library. On September the 3rd, with poet Michael Wall. And we have this project called Two Languages, One Community. We bring African American community and Chinese American communities together in poetry writing and storytelling. So in that event, we will share our event. I share our project and our poetry. Both of our poetry bilingual in Chinese and English. So please join us. Yes. Yes. We are delighted to be hosting. John and her, her writing partner and friend, Michael war. We are not writing partners with project partners, but we do. I mean, I translate his poetry. That's true. But we don't write together. Okay. We don't write as piece together. No, we don't. Okay. Well, you're always talking and together at Mechanics Institute. Anyway, so that is September 3rd at six o'clock. I put the link to that also in the chat space. And. I just registered. I just registered. The two of them are individually fascinating, but their creative. Joint creative spark. Is, is really something to experience. And both of them are, you know, hyper local. San Franciscans. And so I hope you can join us on September. Karen and Chum. Is this the same Michael where who used to be at Moab? Yes. He used to be the deputy director. Yes. A while ago. Yeah. So you know him. Yes, I do. Yeah. That sounds like a wonderful project. Yeah, we've been working on it for three years. Very nice. Organizations with Oakland Asian culture center, then Chinese culture center of San Francisco. Yes. So we are expanding it. I mean, now. Yeah. Yeah. We are just constantly working on it. Very good. Yeah. Let us know when you publish. Yeah, we have a, we put a little book together for our participant. In the culture center workshop. Yeah. It's on our website. Yeah. It's good. Language is one community in one word. I mean, we're still building it, but the book is on it. It's, you can flick. Oh, very good. Thank you. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, very good. Thank you. Well, thank you. I would love to see you guys then. Thank you all for your very moving readings. It's a, it's a tough time. We all need to take care for many, many challenging reasons. Right. Yes. And it's just keeps getting tougher, right? Yeah. I wrote my piece for my father who I hope my parents, I cannot see them because the COVID-19 and the two country. At each other's thoughts and it's. Epic. So far. I mean, it's, it's really saddening. Yeah. Yeah. Really. I don't know when we'll be realistic for me to go back. Yeah, but I know so many parents, people are separate from their family, even for my friends who have. Have parents living in another state. It's not that easy to, to go and see them. Yeah. You know, I, I. I have dealt with the pandemic in one other short story. This also YA. And I think it's because my niece who just graduated and I have some young friends who are just graduating from high school. You know, the youth. The youth are really suffering right now, almost more than anybody else in some ways, because they're being ripped from what we all. They're not as, as, as youth and young people in our, in our experience to a greater or lesser extent, they're not getting that experience and they're being pushed into a world that's online. They're being, you know, they don't get their, you know, proms or their dates or their dances or their whatever. And I just have such a sympathy, a heart for, for young people and they're, you know, they're having to be strong. They're having to be strong. They're having to be strong. You know, they're having to be strong at the same time when they, you know, they shouldn't have to be, but that's the way life is. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I really feel so sympathetic to boys. Because they are, you know, they're young. They should be out. Right. Remember when we were. We were crazy. And they can't be. They can. Yeah. It's tough. It's never, the world is ever going to recover to what we had before. Well, I mean, I don't sound very optimistic, but. I think we'll be changed. I think we'll be changed, but I believe in our resilience, but this is war. This is, this is the kind of the way I look at it. It's the kind of a shift seismic shift that happens. Like during a world war. You know, where all of a sudden, you know, when a bomb drops in a restaurant that was there is now gone forever. That might have been successful even, and now it's gone forever. Except instead of a bomb, it's, it's the, it's the pandemic and closing a restaurant. Or we seem to get the same people, doesn't it? It gets the young and it gets the old and it gets the marginalized. And it's doing that now. It was reflected in our stories too, I think. Yes. Well, with a decline of the middle class in America, so many people have no safety net whatsoever. We used to have a robust middle class and now we have, you know, the extremely wealthy and those people who would have been middle class are now without a paycheck at all. And, you know, after many, many years of living paycheck to paycheck. Just scrimping by to suddenly have no paycheck. It's horrible. And there's this tremendous wave. Of evictions that's coming our way. Which is. I just can't even fathom it. I used to tell my son. When I was growing up, we didn't have homeless people. And the churches and the synagogues never closed. The church door was always open. But with the advent of the various. Drugs that have been flooded into the communities of color. And then throughout the whole United States, it is unbelievable. People are not willing to take their addicted children back in. Because things disappear. They sell grandmas, you know, wedding band for a fix. So this is the big change. But am I angry at people about that? No, I'm not. What I'm angry at is no one. Has been held accountable for this travesty. This flood of prescription drugs. No one has done the perp walk. And I am very angry about that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Is being held responsible. So that's my rant for the day. Good one. And now we can't even go outside because of the smoke. Oh, God. You guys have smoke up there. Oh, yeah. Sorry to hear that. Really bad. Oh, that's right. It's Northern California. And it's really bad. It's really bad. It's really bad. It's really bad. It's really bad. It's really bad. It's really bad conditioning. So I've got to have. When those open, but I can't leave them open for too long. Because my nose and throat will start hurting, especially early in the morning. And like now it's starting to get more. Wow, guys. That's terrible. I've got my fans on. But it's, you know, We go through this. It looks like every summer, it seems to be now. Yeah. Right. I mean, I used to work in my, I used to work for a medical device company, my chronic in the North. I mean, for, for, for a while, nobody thought about fire now. It's like every year you think about fire. Yeah. Like ever since I walked out of the hospital one morning after doing a 12 hour shift and 1130, I walked out and there was a big Oakland Hills on fire. From San Francisco. And a cookbook page was found on the concrete. From across the bay. It's a story right there. There is. Since then it's been like almost every single year. These huge, ginormous fires, you know, it's just, and today. Like this is a fake background, obviously. A photo I took years ago, but it's calming. And that it's so smoky up here today. I'm up in the Lafayette Hills and my eyes were like beat red before this meeting. I'm like, you know, by scene, but there is no climate change. Oh no. No climate change. It's all hoax. We must figure it out. We've got to work through these things. Yeah. It's crazy the way we live now. I mean, just how much. Garbage would produce. I am a polymer scientist. I know it's not. I did degradable by degradable materials, but what we are using. I'm not degradable. And it just really in huge, huge trouble for that. There's zero doubt about it. We are, but that is not changing. No. And you know, we have an electric car. We have solar panels. We have two big Tesla batteries. Just for the car. We probably wouldn't know it necessarily if the electricity did go out. We've given back to our neighbors with our electricity, but even so, the trash for two people come on. For just two people. And I try to compress it and everything, but even so, it's like, come on. It's also, you know, the speaking of trash, the amount of mail we all receive. I mean, like 30 years ago, 30 years ago, you know, I heard somebody say, you know, the average American gets in the course of a week or two, what our grandparents got in a year. Yeah. None of it is letters. No. No, no. And our kids don't even know how to write cursive. That's right. That's right. I'm thinking about that. I'm thinking about beginning to write my parents' letters again, because they, I haven't done a handwritten letter for wonderful. Yeah. I used to write when I was in college. I used to write to them at three times a week. Oh, how nice. We send, we send our grandkids letters and we, we do it purposefully and in writing and cursive. And it's our secret language with. They enjoy it as a, they enjoy it as a secret language, but I don't think they'll have that much use for it other than that, although I hope that they, that they still will. Well, you're getting a handwritten letter is such a delight. You know, and so to have that with your grandchildren, that's just fabulous. It's a gift. We send our grandchildren little things like this, you know, because he's so big on animals and, you know, different animals that they have. And he wants now to do reading with us on zoom. He's in Hawaii. Nice. We came up with these different fiction stories. He wants to read the animal and. He wants to read the animal and psychopathy. The encyclopedia of animals. So we're getting us the encyclopedia of animals and him in the copy of the encyclopedia animals. He's very smart. But you know, that's what he likes. He loves it when we send him these animal cards. These are all baby. He has a little sister. So he's really interested in baby. Baby elephant. Yeah. All right. Well, I want to thank you all for coming and sharing your, your post pandemic thoughts. Even if it's comforting, even in. In the sort of casual way. Yes, it is comforting. Thank you. Thank you, chair. Thank you. You're welcome. Have a nice evening. And thanks everyone. Nice to meet you. Likewise. Thank you. Thank you.