Erika Raskin's Blog

Photo by Ofspace LLC on Unsplash Trump’s recent acquisition of the Nobel Prize reminds me of the time I came upon this mysterious room in the basement of an esteemed American hospital. The door had been left ajar and I peered in. (Duh.) It was basically a mausoleum for old plaques pried off walls and entryways. The markers that had previously announced honor — and probably hung with some fanfare— were now stacked in piles of ephemera. Those awards, which had included naming rights for...

I was at a newish friend’s house for the first time and we were chatting when out of nowhere she asked if I was any good at art placement. ‘Not bad,’ I answered. (So long as you don’t look at the misguided holes in the dry wall behind the frames.) She explained that she’d just painted the den and wanted to mix things up. ‘How about furniture placement?’ she asked. I tried not to jump up. Rearranging rooms is my crack. Completely untrained in interior design, nothing makes me happier than...

This is Morticia. Over the summer she (he?) rehabbed a hurt wing between our house and the one next door, breaking bread with feral cats and deer while also being fed by her brethren and people alike. While I didn’t look for roadkill , I did sprinkle the yard with Purina. Which has got to be a step up in the culinary department. Our neighbors whose porch she claimed to actually convalesce on weren’t huge fans (think smaller birds and windshields) but they did tolerate her need for shelter....

So, pretty much every old saw about old age is 100% true. There’s crepitus (the medical onomatopoeia-ous description of creaky joints), and the inevitable geriatric bitch sessions where individualized assaults on the body are compared in groups of two or more, (except, of course for the unmentionable issues which are unmentionable for a reason); and the whole-scale disappearance of words from mental dictionaries (though, thankfully adjacent synonyms seem to hang on longer.) There also seems...

unsplash Erika Raskin Oct 02, 2025 This essay, called Tales of a Sub, originally aired on WVTF public radio . Years ago, before I decided to bite the bullet and embrace the soul crushing rejection that often goes with Being a Writer, I decided to try my hand at substitute teaching. I realized my mistake almost immediately. Part of the problem was Miss T., a school secretary who’d call before the sun rose to line-up her fill-ins. She scared the hell out of me. And not just because she carried...

Erika Raskin Sep 26, 2025 this (terrifying) actual poster photo was not included in the letter. My letter to the editor -- Richmond Times Dispatch What I’d like to say to those consider joining U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement: The footage of masked authorities descending on other people reminds me of the Stanford prison experiment (which has freaked me out for half a century). Undertaken only a generation or so past the horrors of German war crimes, academic researchers wanted to...

An Update on a 5-year-Old Piece 5/24/20 The Daily Progress: In my defense, I’d just envisioned raised beds. On the deck. Or maybe a bunch of those individual pots like the packaged plants of oregano and basil next to the bok choy in the grocery store. But, you know, with corn stalks and watermelons in them. The idea of growing our own was in response to the lockdown and shortages and the looming threat of scurvy. While most of my scarcity concerns actually revolve around toilet paper, I...

I started it when the covid separation from family and friends became insufferable — when physical forays into each others’ lives had morphed into calls, texts and the occasional unruly clan zoom. Which was interesting in terms of the Raskin Bad Habit of talking over 25 relatives. (Hello mute button.) Anyhoo, I don’t remember the exact moment when I thought to do it but it became A Pandemic Project. I ordered magnets along with many bulletin boards to affix them to, and got to work on the...

I went to pick up the poster commemorating Democracy Summer, the program started by Jamie Raskin (my brother) from the framer’s. Made by...

I’m a writer. Language is serious business. (So are grammatical symbols and I’m confused as to how the quotation marks landed around...