"My grandmother has no fingerprints. Her hands are lean, soft on the back, and wrinkled. She has lost her fingerprints over the years to feeding tuckered harvest crews, raising babies, and teaching generations of children to keep a farm alive." Brenna Reitmann looks at her own calloused hands to answer the question university keeps asking: "Who are you?" BillKittredge's essay, "Buckaroos," describes "a kind of woman who never seems to bother about who she is supposed to be, mainly because there is always work, and getting it done in a level-eyed way is what counts most."
(Broadcast: "Reflections West," 12/17/14. Listen weekly on the radio, Wednesdays at 3:00 p.m.)