The Moth Presents Occasional Magic

 The Moth Presents Occasional Magic: True Stories About Defying the Impossible Edited by Catherine Burns
2019
Weight: 1.05 lbs
Method of Disposal: Giving Away

I accidentally picked up the first Moth book while in Santa Rosa, Florida at a wonderful little bookstore called Sundog Books.  I have no idea what drew me to it, but I picked it up last minute while waiting in line for the register.  I was buying an absurd amount of greeting cards, as usual, and a few books.  There were a lot of people in there, and the downtown Square was much more popular and populated than I had ever remembered seeing it.  The small city had really grown in the years I had been away.  It is hard to imagine all the things we did on that trip now.  Covid would have changed everything, as it has done this year.  I am so glad we already had so many of the times we've had.  I know the present and future have so much to offer also, but it is not terrible to reflect on the past.

Moth has these incredible, sometimes unbelievable, personal stories, like the piece by a teenager about her experience saving a shooting victim.  She used skills she learned from Umedics, a black grassroots group that teaches people how to medically respond in emergency situations.  Not only does she save him, as a child, but then she goes on to help get his family trained to also respond in similar situations.  Those kind of stories make you wonder about your own mettle.

There was another story about a young, gay man, growing up in a homophobic landscape, trying to find himself.  Trying to win over and then ultimately deciding to emulate a young man he had been seeing in the bar only to find out much later that the man he had been hyping up was Jeffrey Fucking Dahmer.

There are also stories about what one woman wore to her divorce, what it was like to meet President Obama while working for his team, an adult son finding a relationship with his dad, and so many others.  It is good stuff.