here’s the link to Cara’s website

English Department at the University of Southern California since 1978. His work has been translated into more than two dozen foreign languages, including German, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, Korean, Japanese, Danish, Swedish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Finnish, Farsi, Turkish, Albanian and Slovene. His stories have appeared in most of the major American magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, The Paris Review, GQ, Antaeus, Granta and McSweeney's, and he has been the recipient of a number of literary awards. He currently lives near Santa Barbara with his wife and three children.

And, here’s the link to Cara’s website/blog mentioned above. It’s a treasure trove of stories. Worth spending a lot of time with.

“Welcome to The Small Story, a blog about the lives of everyday people in Massachusetts – the challenges they face, the celebrations they make, and the communities they like to call home.
It’s a natural extension of the eight years I spent as a newspaper reporter, first at The Hartford Courant, then at The Seattle Times. Time and again, the small story pulled me in: the first day of school for a boy displaced by Hurricane Katrina, the final months of foster care for a tired teenager, the slow road to recovery for an injured Iraq War veteran and his mother.”


Brett Pangburn, 37, just says this:

“Well, then don’t be a teacher.”

“The question was when,” he says. “And the fear, of course, is that it would be too late.”Because this is what it takes to help the students at Excel Academy, the charter school where Brett has taught sixth grade English the past four years. Some kids show up the first day unclear about where to put a period. They use capital letters in the wrong places. Their question marks are upside down.

In the Kingdom of the Shakyas lived King Zay-tsang and his wife Gyutrulma, daughter of Bishukarma. In a previous life Gyutrulma had prayed to be born as the mother to a Buddha.

In the deva realm , the bodhisattva Dampatogkarpo gave his crown to the bodhisattva Maitreya, in preparation to his descending to earth. He then emanated himself as a white elephant. As his mother, Gyutrulma lay sleeping she had a dream that a white elephant, shining with a glorious light, was within her womb and she flew through the sky and climbed mountains. Many kings and minister bowed and prostrated to her, It was at that time that the Buddha entered her womb.