Dear Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop (EBWW) 2020:

Thank you for choosing Bon Mot as your personal moniker shopper. We appreciate the opportunity to help you choose the appellation that accentuates your positives.

We spent the weekend browsing the hangers in your word closets in #virtualErma and private facebook group. Using proprietary algorithms, we culled the following arty creations for further analysis:

Ermite

Ermas

Ermazon

Erma Nation

These are all superior to the generic Hey you, Yo gurlfriend and Ladies! Ladies! However, if there can be only one, let it be

I recently had a dialogue with my friend Hector about racism which was so productive that I published an essay about it on Medium. He went from denying he was racist to being willing to accept that since we are all products of our culture and our culture is racist, therefore, both of us, being White, are unavoidably racist. (Cookies were also involved.)

The piece went modestly viral. I received a variety of thought provoking comments. They came from three types of readers: Black readers, reasonable White readers and White male trolls.

If, as you read this story, it seems familiar, that’s because I posted it earlier in the year in a different form. I’ve reworked it and submitted to Chicken Soup for the Soul. We’ll see.

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When a friend called to see if I wanted to go for a walk, I was glad. It was late spring 2020. Even though it was early days into the COVID-19 pandemic, I felt like I’d been stuck in the house forever….

Eugene was intelligent, did good work and charged reasonable rates. He was also obnoxious (“Yeah, I’m a douchebag.”) and noisy, with a carrying voice. Worst of all, he never completed a job from start to finish. The man had a bad habit of