{"id":42129,"date":"2026-04-01T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.boisestate.edu\/osher\/?p=42129"},"modified":"2026-03-31T11:38:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T17:38:03","slug":"personal-writing-sig-kate-fahey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boisestate.edu\/osher\/blog\/2026\/04\/01\/personal-writing-sig-kate-fahey\/","title":{"rendered":"Personal Writing SIG: Kate Fahey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This month’s featured writing is from Kate Fahey: Another Day<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kate enjoys being a part of Osher’s supportive and creative Personal Writing SIG. A\u00a032-year resident of Boise, now retired from teaching that followed 25 years of farming and ranching in the Central Valley of California, she has many experiences and memories she wants to record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a strong instructive background in art and art history, she finds writing as taking a primed canvas, adding layers of words, touches of color, nuanced word strokes, merging, arranging them\u2026until hopefully the reader can see and feel a picture of a scene, person, or emotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kate and her husband, Steve, enjoy outdoor adventures: sea kayaking, rafting, hiking, camping, and especially long cycling tours. One highlight was cycling from Bruges to Paris last year. But nothing is more special than their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
Download Printable Another Day<\/em> by Kate Fahey (PDF)<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Another Day<\/em> by Kate Fahey<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

(Osher on Demand, April 2026)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The unforecast storm hit after midnight. Lightning flooded the room as the acrid metallic taste of ozone jagged him awake. Rain sharply splattered the window pane, soon turning to dry blasts of farmyard dirt that rose and flowed against the weathered house like the tide all throughout the night. The old farmer knew his crop was lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At dawn, he bolted upright, donned Levi’s pooled on the floor, and still wearing yesterday’s shirt, trunched to the kitchen. He heard Molly’s tail thumping against the wall\u2026pleased he was rising early. Thankfully, the coffee pot still held yesterday’s brew. He filled his “World’s Greatest Grandpa” mug and saved the cold slice of pizza that had passed from edible to desperate only. He unsnagged his jacket from the door hook. Its strong stench of diesel, smoke, well-earned sweat, and farm stock comforted him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Come on Molly girl\u2026I’m going to need you today.” It would have been nice to have his late wife, Betty, with him on this sad morning. But she’d been dead for many years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As they rushed out, the slamming door startled the indignant rooster deprived of his morning job. Hungry grunts from the peaty hog barn muddied the dawn. As he swiftly trekked the well-worn path behind the farmyard, he feared what he knew he would find. Sandy loam duned against everything that hadn’t blown away. As he passed the tilted cornfield, opportunistic geese rose\u2026their dissatisfied honking piercing the crisp morning mist. He watched them rise, flapping as they found one another\u2026soon veeing in the distance. In a ditch, a broken-eared jack crouched, breathless. Molly bluffed a chase. And then\u2026there it was\u2026his crop\u2026his livelihood. Only yesterday this acreage had shone, wafting in the light breeze before him like a painting in viridescent corduroy, its little sprouts seeking heavenwards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now he walked the furrows, hunched and bent, nudging seedlings, flattened, seared, burnt by wind, bemoaned, and besmeared. Bereft of energy he sank to his knees in the damp fecund soil, inhaling the familiar dense smell which promised new life. He emitted a breathy groan. Alarmed, Molly ran towards him, rubbing her moist nose against his face. He plunged his fists deep, deep into the earth\u2026his earth\u2026his legacy. He clasped clumps of soil in his palms, and brought the fertile humus to caress his face. He breathed softly in and out\u2026in and out. He imagined he was a part of the sandy loam itself\u2026it was his bones, his skin, his blood, his soul. All the myriad creatures, the ancient peoples who had come before, the microorganisms forged in the mists of time\u2026they all were one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He rose swiftly\u2026a life of tough choices deeply etched on his face. Yes, he had lost his crop\u2026but no, he would not fallow this hallowed earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He pulled a crumpled cigarette from his shirt pocket, smelled the acrid flash of match flame, paused to watch the smoke hug his graying beard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With one more tired but knowing survey, he called to Molly, “Come on ole girl, we have us some earth to plow.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This month’s featured writing is from Kate Fahey: Another Day. 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