Archive for July 2022

Elysha Dicks and I have experienced a recent spate of ghosting. Looking for childcare for the fall, we interviewed several candidates. Some of them seemed quite lovely. A few asked to check their schedules based upon our needs before furthering our conversation. Two of them simply never called or texted back. After spending time in…

While visiting Ellis Island earlier this week, I couldn’t help but wonder: What will be our future Ellis Island? What building or institution is functioning and necessary today but will someday be historically relevant but no longer needed or in use? Elysha’s instantaneous answer: The Supreme Court I certainly see her point. Confidence in the…

I took my first flying lesson last week. My instructor, who we discovered once we were airborne live within shouting distance of each other, took me up in a single engine plane, handed me the controls, and told me where to fly. We spent about an hour tracing the Connecticut River from Hartford down to…

Here’s the thing about the recent rise in attempts to ban books from public libraries and schools: In all likelihood, it’s temporary and fleeting. Every time some conservative know-nothing, pandering politician, or religious zealot attempts to shackle intellectual, personal, or artistic freedom, it ultimately fails. Society progresses. sometimes in fits and starts, and not without…

I teach my students many important things in the course of a school year: Effective sentence structure. Shakespearean tragedies. The Oxford comma. Puberty. Long division. I also teach them more important things like: If you try to get tagged in a game of tag, no one likes you. Licking the cheese dust out of the…

My family and I went to see The Lion King on Broadway, I didn’t love it. I know… I’m such a jerk. It’s an utterly beloved show. The audience roared in applause as the curtain closed to end the show. But no. I didn’t love it. Here’s my problem with The Lion King musical: It’s…

I wrote a post about my drive thru conundrum a couple days ago. It received an enormous response. Readers were thoughtful, clever, insightful, amusing, and even helpful. Then I received an email from a reader asking if I was okay. She noticed that a few of the comments about the post on social media were…

I was out with Clara and Charlie, happily making our way through the world, when someone I know stopped me and asked where Elysha was. I told the person that she was off on some other adventure, at which point the person said, “So you’re on parenting duty. Huh?” I explained to the person that…

Here’s my constant conundrum: I arrive at the McDonald’s drive-thru. It’s a tandem drive-thru, meaning two speakers. Two lines. The line to the left has three cars. The line to the right is empty. Either the people waiting in the left line don’t know about the speaker on the right or don’t care enough to…

One of my corporate clients had an idea: Live stream my writing process. While working on the chapter of a book, a magazine column, or a blog post, live stream the image of my laptop’s screen and side-by-side video of me, talking to viewers about some of my thoughts and decisions as I write. She…