the kids are alright
I think that Karyn and I both thought we’d cry a lot more during the graduation ceremony. This is what we’d braced ourselves for, after all, basically just streaming tears through the whole ceremony. I…
Category: personal essays
fatherly advice
Dear Anna, You said when I am “a little less busy” that you’d welcome some help with your graduation speech. It’s like your last homework assignment, some algebraic story problem and term paper and ballet…
taking in air
Early on Tuesday morning I found myself where pavement ends, the roadway cinched up with a horseshoe bend that’s edged by a hundred diagonal parking slots. Coming around that counterclockwise turn and past the trailhead,…
what I love about the canvas photo hanging in our living room above the piano
First, obviously, it’s Karyn’s photo of our children, taken through her eyes, through her lens and onto this print to share her optics. I don’t think about how long ago. It’s an instant captured, Anna…
speaking in tongues
There’s an easy flow that washes through me when I’m teaching, something I don’t attain in private conversation. In the everyday, I’m in the corner; I’m a quarter turn behind meshing gears; words are dragged…
running aspirations
I just got back from a weekend centered around running in a trail marathon that advertises its adversity and ruggedness as some of its virtues. In pre-race information runners are warned about cacti, uncertain footing,…
school planning and educational promise
I can’t remember any school bond or budget that I’ve not supported. I don’t know if that qualifies me as liberal or an overzealous advocate of education, but in any case it’s an indication of…
eclipse epilogue
Like a lot of people, I’m trying to make sense of the eclipse. I understand the orbits and the geometry, and I knew there would be significance and novelty. But I wasn’t fully aware of…
eclipsing science
When I was six years old, the path of a total solar eclipse’s shadow ribboned across my home, my hometown, and my elementary school. It’s stored in that dreamlike haze of longterm memory, but I…