Author Archives: Jack

To all the Supermarkets and big commercial stores that operate ‘Self Check-outs’……. You are heading towards almost exclusively self-checkout now. Today I went shopping at one such store and the lady checking receipts at the exit was stopping everyone. I didn’t choose to participate in that nonsense, I had already filled my cart, emptied my […]

“A letter to a regular. I wrote this to show how much of an influence regulars can have on customer service workers. You used to come in every night. We’ve wondered where you’ve been. For two weeks, our nights have been silent, bland, without your beautiful face and your colourful dresses and your news about […]

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin could have walked by you on the sidewalk, her face calm, her eyes distant, and you might never have guessed that you were in the presence of a mind that had unlocked one of the universe’s greatest secrets. In 1925, with her doctoral thesis Stellar Atmospheres, she revealed something astonishing: hydrogen, the simplest […]

Kendall was a volunteer firefighter. When a call came in about an accident just a mile from his house, he went—he’d only been watching TV, but that’s just who he was. I texted him to say I made it home safely, but he never replied. I assumed he’d fallen asleep. Then I heard my dad […]