Each year, I play anywhere between 4-8 rounds of golf. The infrequency of my play is presumably a key contributor to the lack of improvement of my game.
I have over my life taken golf shots that defy the laws of physics. Balls careening in directions and angles that I could not replicate if I tried (including once where the ball went backwards.) I have hit trees, water and even golf carts with an almost impressive frequency.…
I knew what I wanted to write about on Tuesday. I am still not sure what I have to say.
Speechless and helpless are two natural reactions when the same thing happens over and over again and you are at a loss for what to do about it.
If you read the number 19, you know exactly what I’m talking about. But let us not forget the two – teachers who died in the line of fire.…
It was an especially hectic weekend. On top of the standard travel soccer chaos, there was also a band/chorus concert and tech week for one of my daughter’s theater groups. All of this was compounded by the fact that my wife was away on a well-deserved, but ill-timed, girls’ weekend. I was flying solo.
We had managed the first three days quite well, due in large part to some good planning and even better temperament from my three daughters. A…
I have heard Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” dozens of times, but until recently I never actually listened to it.
On Sunday, I watched the wonderful and moving film, CODA, where it plays a central role. Ruby, the sole hearing member of her deaf family, chooses it as her audition song for admission into the Berklee School of Music.
The desire to go to college is not shared by her family, who don’t appreciate their daughter’s love of music and fear the effects her leaving would have on the family’s fishing business.…
Spiderman came to Hastings this week. More specifically, Tom Holland was in my town shooting a new anthology series for Apple TV. Throngs of kids lined up in a marked off area to catch a glimpse of him. When he finally arrived, clad in period 70’s garb, they screamed. Calling out his name, filming his every move, clamoring for him to come by and say hello – which to his credit he did.…
My family and I recently went to Los Angeles for spring break. I wasn’t able to select our seats in advance to ensure that all five of us could sit together unless I was prepared to upgrade our seats.
Later in the trip, we went to the Universal Studios theme park. The tickets were not cheap, $125 each. Yet when we arrived we found extremely long lines.…
My friend recently told me the story about a lunch he had with another friend of ours. They were getting together at an old stomping ground where we had all had lunch dozens of times before. The circumstances this time were different.
Our friend had terminal cancer, was very weak, and it was clear that this would be their last lunch together. Eating his burger took longer than usual and the waitress seemed to hover a bit.…
What or who do you believe in?
Beliefs can be a tricky thing. We all have them, in fact hold them dearly. Yet seldom do we explicitly state or share them. More often, beneath the surface, they inform, influence or dictate many of our actions.
Beliefs, according to the Oxford dictionary, can be defined in two ways:
One is “an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists.”…
Have you ever been in a funk? Assuming the answer is yes, how did it feel? More importantly, how did it end?
As I write this, I find myself in the middle of one.
For me, funks are episodic. Sometimes lasting a few hours, sometimes a few days. Rarely much more.
Different from true crises, which force us to focus all our energy to resolve a single pressing problem, funks are often a collection of smaller issues.…
This week as part of an Earth Science’s assignment, my daughter has to go outside and observe the phases of the moon. Once she’s found it in the night sky, she is to draw what she’s seen. Over time, she is expected to see the various waxing and waning phases and presumably draw some conclusions.
On a few occasions, she’s asked me to go outside and see the moon with her, which we’ve thoroughly enjoyed.…
It is a common misconception that Thoreau was a hermit. That when he went to “live deliberately and confront only the essentials of life” it was an act of seclusion.
His choice of furniture and its reported use is a direct contradiction of this.
Among the few possessions in the tiny cabin on Walden Pond, were three chairs. He said one was for solitude, two for friendship and three for society.…
Words matter. At their best, they evoke common understanding, connection and feeling. At their worst they mislead, misrepresent and divide.
All words are an abstraction of sorts, a representation of something very real. On a range of issues, experts too often rely on particularly abstract words that are so open to interpretation one could drive a truck through it.
Metaphors are the opposite, they attach to an idea something we can easily relate to and understand.…
In her 2018 memoir, Educated, Tara Westover, shared her incredible life story. She told of being raised by survivalist parents who did not permit her to go to school or see a doctor. In spite of it all and the accompanying trauma, she went on to go to Brigham Young University (her first class there was her first experience in a classroom) and then on to Oxford University and ultimately becoming a bestselling author.…
The word humility means freedom from pride or arrogance. Stated more simply it means not believing you are better than others. Interestingly the use of the word humility seems to have peaked in the early 1800’s and has been on a precipitous decline of the last two hundred plus years – with a slight uptick over the last few.
It is worth noting that this decline coincides with our shift from a hunter/gatherer society to one focused first on agriculture and then on industry.…
The holiday, by nature, can be stressful. Throw in another wave of a pandemic that can impact our health, upend our preparations and wreak havoc on travel plans, it would be understandable if many of us are as they say, “at our wit’s end.”
But to quote the writer, Rudyard Kipling, “If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs, and blaming you.…
Each Wednesday, I commute into the city to teach. It affords me the rare opportunity to relax, read, listen and think. As I travel by train for forty minutes and then walk the thirty blocks from Grand Central to Union Square, I often listen to podcasts, some that make me laugh and others that make me wonder. You could even occasionally catch me singing along to a tune on Spotify.…
“Hey, beautiful!”
A passerby shouted this to the person I was having coffee with a few weeks ago. This “drive-by compliment” from one friend to another brought a smile to all three of our faces on an otherwise dreary day.
It reminded me of a phrase that I learned in one of my many, many hours of online soccer training required to be a travel soccer coach.…
I was interviewed recently for this article that appeared in the New York Times.
It was a vivid and important look at how young people around the world assess their potential for success in life and what they think is necessary for achieving it.
Perhaps surprisingly, young people in poorer countries were generally more optimistic about their chances of future success than those in more economically developed countries like the United States.…
There is a passage in Richard Power’s thought-provoking new novel, Bewilderment, that I find myself returning to again and again.
It describes an epiphany of sorts he has when considering his son and the undiagnosed mental health issues he is dealing with. He writes:
“Watching medicine fail my child, I developed a crackpot theory: Life is something we need to stop correcting. My boy was a pocket universe I could never hope to fathom.…
I promised my daughter I would make her bed on Friday.
I finished it on Saturday.
Of course, making her bed wasn’t just tucking in her covers, arranging her stuffed animals and fluffing her pillow. It was putting together a new loft bed with a built-in desk and shelves underneath.
Now, I don’t consider myself especially handy. I’ve hung some drywall in my time and done a few projects here and there but by and large I would admit my skills are as limited as my tool box.…
This weekend my youngest daughter, fresh off her 10th birthday, began her fifth stint in quarantine.
This time around she will miss two soccer games, one of her best friend’s birthday parties, running a Girls on The Run 5K that she’s been in training for months and of course, trick or treating on Halloween. She will also be spending the next week doing school online. Bringing her total time of unnecessary online learning to over forty days.…
Recently, I had two exchanges with family members that did not go particularly well. Both were spurred on by trying to refute or debate claims fueled by divisive media outlets. Since the election, I have largely tuned out of political shows, but like Michael Corleone says in the Godfather, “Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in!”
I called one of them the following day and posed this simple question: “Does watching political shows bring you any joy?”…
Earlier this week, I was looking to connect with Colby Sharp, an educator who hosts a podcast about children’s books, called The Yarn. I stumbled upon his twitter account and was struck by his “bio” which began with the phrase, “driven by gratitude.”
It was such a wonderful articulation of what motivates him and got me wondering about what drives any of us.
In my own life, I know that what drives me has evolved.…
I’ve just come back from a two-week trip across parts of the country previously unknown to me. We started in Oregon, drove through Idaho into Wyoming and ended our family trip in Montana.
We experienced the wonders of nature in many forms. From Mt. Hood, to Craters of the Moon to the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone and Custer National Forest.
Within each, we witnessed majestic views, the vastness of the great plains, spectacular waterfalls, lush forests, impressive geyser fields, herds of bison and elk, soaring hawks, eagles and osprey, two meandering moose and one adorable bear cub eating berries on the mountain side.…
I have kept a file of all the rejection letters I’ve ever received. Two novels, dozens of short stories, even several poems all rejected by one agent, publisher or publication or another. In my emails, there are probably thousands of other examples of my ideas or proposals being turned down. Of course, there are also those instances where I never even received a reply. This says nothing of the slew of personal rejections that have amassed between my socially awkward high school years until I met and married my lovely wife.…
