Archive for February 2021

Earlier in the week, I mentioned that there is still glass in my forehead after a 1988 car accident that sent me through a windshield forehead first. I want to assure all concerned readers that it’s fine. The glass poses me no danger whatsoever. After the accident, I was sent to the operating room, where…

I’d’ve. That’s a word. Not in the dictionary, but I stumbled upon it while reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to the family last night. A double-contraction for the words “I would have.” Not only did JK Rowling invent a new word, but she also created a new type of word: The double…

I celebrated my birthday yesterday, and like everyone who has celebrated a birthday in the United States since around March 12, 2020 (except for the selfish, pigheaded idiots), I was forced to do it without the typical gathering associated with these kinds of celebrations. It was also my 50th birthday, which under normal circumstances might…

On December 23, 1988, I was in a head-on collision in my mother’s 1976 Datsun B-210. I was driving through Mendon, Massachusetts on a snowy afternoon when my car slid into the opposite lane and met a Mercedes Benz halfway down a hill. I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt at the time, even though I always…

Last week, as Charlie and I were reading about Thomas Hooker, founder of the Connecticut colony, he said: “Thomas Hooker has a really weird name.” So said the boy who doesn’t know what a hooker is and has the last name Dicks. The boy has a lot to learn.

Back in 2017, a judge in Hawaii ordered a defendant to write more than 140 “nice” things about his ex-girlfriend after he violated a protection order. “For every nasty thing you said about her, you’re going to say a nice thing,” 2nd Circuit Judge Rhonda Loo told Daren Young. “No repeating words.” Young was ordered…

As you may know, I maintain an “I told you so” calendar as a part of my Google calendar. When you tell me that the Patriots will finish in last place in the AFC East and I disagree, I make a note on my “I told you so” calendar. Then I call you on the…

In the 1970s, the CIA created a laser-guided, liquid-fueled dragonfly-sized drone. In 2017, researchers equipped a real genetically-modified dragonfly with a solar-powered backpack and steering implants to turn it into a drone. Science is astounding. We hear a lot of stupidity from right wing climate change deniers, militant anti-vaxxers, and a host of anti-science idiots, but…

A few years ago, I’m teaching storytelling to former gang members who now work in the community, helping teenagers avoid the same mistakes that led them to their imprisonment. During lunch, one of the men approaches me and says, “Where did you do your time?” It takes me a second to understand what he means.…

One of the lessons that I try to drive home to students (and the adults who I coach) is the importance of being someone who makes things. Rather than simply being the content consumers – constantly paying for the creativity and ingenuity of others – I counsel people who will listen to become the kind…