Back Online with Xmas Letters

I am staging my return to blogging with a presentation of old Xmas letters. Back in 1996, we sent these short missives out with the Christmas cards, and I tried to be funny. Now, re-reading them, they are painfully moronic. My sign off messages are particularly sad. I think the author was an idiot. Still, … Read more

Throw-back Correspondence

I had a nostalgic moment. I seem to have a lot of those, but this one was classic, or, rather, in the classical sense of nostalgia. I play the accordion. I’m not very good at it, have only been playing for a little more than three years, and there’s a lot to learn. I stopped … Read more

Morning Routine–Part 2 (Revised)

In many ways, our kids have it easier than we did, but that also complicates other aspects of their lives. It’s easier because we live in a house with two and a half bathrooms, so the fighting is over which hair appliance is plugged in, and who left the cap off of the teeth-whitening toothpaste. … Read more

Morning Routine–Part 1

When I was a kid, we had a fairly rigid morning routine. The house was small, and my brothers and I slept in the (finished) attic. There was only a single bathroom, but in later years my father built a shower in the basement near the drain, but we were a bath-at-night family during the … Read more

Threshold

Shortly before leaving for college, I went to a party at my friend’s house. It was an odd time because many of us were about to leave town and start new lives. There was an anxious energy about, at least for me there was. The party was much like the others we’d had that summer, … Read more