Refracted Neurons

Photo by Manel Torralba “That’s the wrong way to do that,” Grimmett put his hand over Jade’s, then drew it back, “Are you wearing gloves?”  The other students didn’t look up from their workbenches, but their movements seemed to slow as they eavesdropped. Glass work was too dicey to stop, one hesitation and hours of work could shatter. Jade looked at the malformed bead on her mandrel. She, on the other hand, had nothing to lose. Setting the mandrel on the graphite benchtop, she slid her hands out of the gloves, “I really don’t want to get burned.”  “If you let your fear dictate what you do as a lampworker, you will never improve,” Grimmett raised his voice so the whole class could hear over the hiss of their torches. “If you continue to work in glass, you will at some point get burned,” he pulled down on the neck of his shirt, exposing the top of a scar, a patch of skin melted and discolored by heat.  Ignoring him, Jade rapped her mandrel on the benchtop until the bead

Yellow jacket makes them sound like the gentlemen of wasps, as if they buzz around in little top hats, waving miniature canes.  These wasps are no gentlemen. Honestly, we've had them around our yard for years.  We have flowers blooming from spring until fall, and with that comes bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.  They usually buzz us when we're eating outside, completely unaffected by the citronella candle. A butterfly on our hydrangea tree Then I stepped in their nest.  I was trying to trim a blackberry bush that was growing in an ever-expanding patch of Saint John's Wort.  I hate doing this because I can't see where I'm putting my feet, and in this case, one of my legs went straight down into a hole. "That's weird," I said, pulling my leg out. "What's weird?" asked my son.  He and his sister were supposed to be playing in the backyard, but for some reason watching me do yard work was more exciting.  It was about to ge