Posts by mattyd

At a book talk, I was asked about the recent banning of books in stupid places by stupid people. My answer: The same people who are banning and support the banning of books have placed phones in their children’s hands, giving them access to every damn thing ever placed on the internet — vile, horrendous,…

Today, Elysha and I celebrate our 18th wedding anniversary. We’ll spend most of it driving north to Vermont to pick up Clara from camp, where she has been for more than three weeks. Besides a handful of postcards, we haven’t heard a peep from our girl in nearly a month, so hugging our daughter and…

Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the iconic sex therapist whose advice helped educate millions of Americans about sexual desires and practices, sadly died this week. I met Dr. Ruth backstage at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in the spring of 2016. We were both speaking at a TEDx conference. She spoke about the importance of taking…

I’ve driven by this restaurant every time I visit the FBI at Quantico, and I cannot help but wonder: How did this happen? How did a Mexican restaurant end up with an Irish name? Or a partially Irish name. So I went searching and found a few other oddities: First, Carlos O’Kelly’s is a franchise.…

I occasionally see a person wearing a mask while driving their car. I’ve also seen people wearing masks walking down an otherwise empty sidewalk. Recently, I saw someone wearing a mask while watching a Little League game. I never question anyone wearing a mask in an indoor space. They may be sick and wearing it…

I see the words people say. When someone speaks – and especially when I am speaking – I see the words being spoken like closed captioning. For a long time, I thought everyone did this. Then, one day, I asked a colleague if she was as annoyed as me by an administrator’s speech pattern. The…

Birds play an oversized role in golf. A birdie occurs when a golfer finishes a hole one stroke under par. It’s a difficult feat but not exactly rare. I’ve scored at least five birdies this year and witnessed many more. An eagle indicates a golfer has finished a hole two strokes under par. For example,…

As Louisiana begins violating our separation of church and state and displaying a set of arcane religious laws in its public classrooms—a list containing a handful of meaningless rules ignored by even the most observant Christians, plus some glaring omissions—I was reflecting on a time when my kids were studying the Ten Commandments at Hebrew…

I was dropped off by an Uber driver in Scottsdale, Arizona, well after midnight, in a dark, sketchy place about a mile from my hotel. The driver pointed at a building that appeared to have a lobby, but when I got close, I could see it was an office building with locked doors. I turned…

The boy loves the cat. The cat loves the boy. I’m not sure who loves who more, which is probably precisely how every relationship should be. Either way, it is a beautiful thing to see.