Category: Essays

November 21, 2022

by Nadya Markowska

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Be a Trans Woman

I want to be joyful.

A screenshot of a black-and-white american flag with 53 stars, five of them colored red, set against a white background next to a rendering of the statue of liberty, draped in a brightly colored american flag

November 10, 2022

by Nadya Markowska

I Tried to Interview for a Job With a Right-Wing Fringe Group

I’ve felt hopeless before–we all have–but this is what true hopelessness sounds and looks like

Picture of the old Columbia County Courthouse in St. Helens, Oregon. The building is over a hundred years old, but it is well maintained, with dark gray bricks and clean white wood trim. Big windows are arranged in groups of four on either side of the courthouse, and a little tower emerges from the middle of the top of the building. Behind the courthouse is a blue sky filled with puffy white clouds.

October 31, 2022

by Nadya Markowska

I Applied For a Job With a Right-Wing Fringe Group

One morning, I woke up and applied for a new job. By the end of the day I was listening to a poem written by a 19th-century Populist who loved eugenics. In between, I quit the job I already had by simply walking out.

Satellite image of the area around Liberal, Oregon, showing markings for Wagonwheel, the Molalla River, the Pacific Northwest Skydiving Center, the Oregon Child Development Coaltion, and distant markers for Carus, Gladstone, Clackamas, and New Era

August 31, 2022

by Nadya Markowska

I Told You They Could Change The Name of Swastika Mountain, and More Ridiculous Oregon Place Names

So, I hear they’re changing the name of ol’ Swastika Mountain. In a stunning victory for both progressive geography nerds and people who still get upset about things they read in the newspaper, the...

Photograph of a rolling hill, covered in dry grass. A simple wooden fence cuts through the middle of the photo and disappears behind an old wooden barn that looks to be at least a hundred years old. Beyond the barn and the fence is a darkened sky, with troubling thunderstorm clouds stretching all the way to the horizon. But the photograph is still bright, implying that the sun is still out from behind the direction the photograph was taken.

August 26, 2022

by Nadya Markowska

The World Began in Eden and Ended in Los Angeles: A Brief Reflection on a Year Away From Home

California sucks. Everything you’ve heard about the place is (mostly) true. It’s beautiful, all of it: the mountains, the deserts, the forests, the shorelines, and the people, too. Everything grows here. It’s lush and...