12 Comments

Thanks Jeff for your always delicious writing. Glad to have found your blog. Praying you and Tristan are well.

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I love the way you weave stories together, Jeff. Thank you for this.

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I'm new to your essays, Jeff, and I can't wait to read more! As someone who used to raise a few chickens in my backyard, I totally understand talking to them. Thank you for this beautiful essay.

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Great essay! On the specific tangent of chickens, you might enjoy the new novel Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth. It’s funny, but also quite poignant in a lot of places....

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Thanks for the recommendation!

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Wow, I love this essay and the way you styled it! That’s my favorite way to write. The dancing back and forth between stories was very compelling.

I feel like the Chinese way of exploring one’s land is fantastic and something I can really relate to. My parents were from New England and though I was born in Texas, I still feel like a New Englander because of their influence.

Thanks for sharing a bit of your family’s story and your honest yet compassionate reflections on raising chickens here with us. I have mixed feelings about eating meat and would sort of like to raise chickens. But maybe only for eggs!

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The experience of raising chickens has made me rethink and change the way we buy meat.

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Beautiful essay on humanity and our pasts!

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I'm writing a long paragraph for my church's bulletin in celebration to Asian Pacific month. I chose Dr Mabel Ping Hua Lee, also born in Guangzhou, China in 1896. Within 24 hours, you wrote about your family from that same city. I love our amazingly small world. Thank you Jeff for bringing your life into mine.

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"We don’t like to be reminded how other bodies give theirs up for ours." Another whole thread to follow with this idea. So enjoyed reading this. Thank you for writing it.

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i am so in love with this.

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I was mesmerized by your words when I first saw you-last march in Philadelphia. I have been using your fried rice recipe as my pandemic lifeline. Your words are inspiring me to write my own. I'm not creepy at all.

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