Generally speaking, qarrtsiluni only accepts submissions of new work, not retreads of work which has appeared elsewhere. But for their current issue, they're subverting that paradigm. The theme of this issue is Greatest Blog Hits, and for this issue alone they're seeking previously-published work at least a year old. How often do we revisit favorite blog posts, as we may revisit beloved books or poems? It's easy for posts to slip out of conscious memory once they scroll out of our aggregators or off of a blog's main page.

They've reprinted some amazing work. Like The Silverberg Variations: a story in twelve movements, from the long-defunct the vernacular body; Puma, from creek running north; and Riding With the Local Used Cow Dealer in West Point, Nebraska, from The Middlewesterner.

The editors there have graciously reprinted one of my favorite old VR posts, about my first time serving on my congregation's chevra kadisha: Facing impermanence, posted in April of 2005. (A link to that post on my own site lives in the sidebar of this blog, so many of you may have seen it before. Even so, there's a certain pleasure in seeing it reprinted in a new home...)

As always, I'm honored to be in such august company. Go and read, and lose yourself in some of the wondrous stories contained in the snow globe of the blogosphere. These pieces merit multiple readings, and I'm so glad the editors of qarrtsiluni chose to hold them again up to the light.

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