2004 - Vol. 1, Issue 1

Sometimes I shake when people touch me
and I can't stop, the way wind dusts the shore
for handprints. Sometimes we are waves, and
sometimes the undertow. My doctor cannot
explain this. Bodies tremble, we are afraid.
Even the poultice of skin is no comfort. It is
some essential tremor, like any movement,
an antigen to stasis itself. Perhaps I am dying
slowly, like everything else. I look into a
face, any face, and it is the one face, and I
shake. But we are religious when we suffer
and this should keep us immune.

For years, beneath the cat-clawed reading chair in our farmhouse living room, J. R. R. Tolkien lay facedown. How The Fellowship of the Ring arrived and then remained there for so long, I have no idea. All I know is that whenever I felt like it, I could scrabble down on my knee, reach into the dust and cat fuzz, and see Tolkien on the back cover, pipe in hand, smiling his slightly snaggletoothed smile.

It was Tolkien's simple paintings that graced my parents' set of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. His quiet, amateur, elegant pictures of Bilbo's hole in Hobbiton, the close gray trees of Fangorn forest, and the immense white bastion of Minas Tirith held just enough magic and understated secrecy that I was obsessed with Middle-earth long before I'd ever read a word. The photo of Tolkien on the back of each of the paperbacks completed the promise; he seemed about to spill into story right from the cover. Plus, the photo presented a slightly unusual creature for a child: a completely unintimidating big person.

"I think that it is part of our mission to provide an atmosphere where people can start to think enough of themselves to become activists."
-Norm Meldrum, founder of AbilityMaine

I have stumbled into a dream. It was not my idea to start a disability literature and culture magazine. The credit belongs to Norman Meldrum, who, along with Russ Anderson, founded and is the chief force behind AbilityMaine. More than a year ago, Norm proposed that I take over "some sort of arts/culture/writing component" of the AbilityMaine site. It seemed to both of us that there was an increasingly obvious divergence in the site's material: Norm's focus, and the main intent of AbilityMaine, has always been activist — to provide resources and information that would empower people with disabilities (PWDs) in Maine to take greater control over their lives. However, my monthly humor columns, which are often not overtly activist and which sometimes don't even address disability directly, were becoming an integral part of the site. Additionally, other readers were submitting personal essays and other writings that did not fit into the category of information, resources, or activism.

Congratulations to Annu Sharma, who created the winning design for Breath & Shadow's logo! It has been a joy to work with Annu and we are thrilled to have her logo enhance our new site.

Those of us at Breath & Shadow have been impressed by Annu's graciousness, flexibility, and hard work. I conducted an e-mail interview with her to give our readers a chance to appreciate this unique and principled woman, as well.