On Monday, one of my Providence College faculty colleagues posted this on Facebook: Today was my one and only day of exams, so all that stands between me and Summer research is: 74 short papers 28 medium papers 32 long papers 3 longer papers 28 final exams See you all on the other side… I know this colleague well—when he says “long” and “longer” papers, he means it. I conservatively estimate that he has 600-800 pages of student writing to... Read more
I grew up in hunting country where at the appropriate times each year the males of the species took their preferred firearms and started shooting things. I remember my father returning from a day of hunting with a partridge or two or even a squirrel in his backpack (much to my mother’s consternation). Every third year or so he would hit the jackpot and get a deer, setting us up with meat for most of the upcoming winter. My older... Read more
There is a saying, particularly popular among conservatives, that “A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.” I am a liberal, but cannot challenge the alleged truth of this saying since I have never (thankfully) been mugged. Over six decades of experience, however, I have had plenty of opportunity to wonder about an important question that this saying raises for everyone, regardless of political or social commitments—What happens when ideology runs headlong into real life? I got to thinking... Read more
I read once that there are two kinds of living things—they are distinguished by the strategies they have developed in response to perceived threat and danger. One kind responds to danger by running away from it, developing strategies and evolving tools to sidestep threats in more and more complex and sophisticated ways. We call this kind of living thing Animals. The other kind’s strategy is to hunker down, grow roots along with protective armor, and face danger by refusing to... Read more
In our three years in Milwaukee, our first years together as a married couple trying to cobble a functional stepfamily together, Jeanne and I set our radio alarm to NPR, which would awaken us every morning at six o’clock. The early show was classical music, hosted by a local public radio fixture with the comforting and dulcet tones of an educated uncle. As we emerged into the day from sleep, the host would provide a brief weather report before queuing up... Read more
I am enjoying reading Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache mystery series these days; the third book in the series is The Cruelest Month, set during an April Easter season and clearly taking its title from the opening line of T. S. Eliot’s inscrutable poem “The Waste Land.” And there are some cruel things about April, starting with taxes being due and the beginning of my allergy season. But this April has been a good one—for several reasons, in no apparent order .... Read more
I was angry with my father for a lot of reasons over the years, some justified and some not. But I don’t recall any time when I was more pissed at him than when I heard him say on one of his cassette-taped “fireside chats” aimed at his followers and groupies that “a person’s real family is almost never his blood family.” Thanks a lot, Dad—signed, “One of your blood family.” I heard this a few short months after my... Read more
We never see the world exactly as it is because we are how the world is. Maria Popova` In the 1992 Vice Presidential debate, with Al Gore on one side and Dan Quayle on the other, Ross Perot’s running mate, Admiral James Stockdale, asked two questions that have become part of Presidential politics lore: Who am I? Why am I here? Stockdale took a great deal of criticism and heat for his performance as well as triggering a lot of... Read more
As Jeanne and I do various things in the house on Saturdays, we often have NPR on. This past Saturday, however, our local NPR station was in the midst of fund-raising, interrupting the shows we wanted to hear so that two locals in the studio could talk to each other about how fabulous it would be if people would call in or go online and contribute money so that we could avoid having our local public radio station circle down... Read more
Bright and early on Wednesday morning, it began. Actually, it began around 10:30 on Wednesday morning—that’s bright and early for my son, who often works late into the evening. He had tattooed until midnight on Tuesday night. After Photoshopping two pictures of my dachshund Frieda into one, tracing the picture onto what looked all the world like carbon paper (familiar to those old enough to remember typewriters), then transferring the tracing onto my left arm, we were ready. “Looks like... Read more
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