So I was in Sam’s Club a week or so ago, just doing the normal Sam’s thing. You know how it goes: a sample here, a sample there, two gallons of milk for under three dollars a piece, a large jug of orange juice, that large box of Honey Nut Cheerios. Stocking up in the … More Different is Good
It is November 26th, which means, in my experience, steel-grey skies and a damp cold. Winter clamps down on Pittsburgh in November and won’t loosen its grip until mid-March at the earliest. The closets of my childhood home have, I am sure, already undergone the necessary exchange: all signs of summer and short-sleeves are replaced … More Here
I just spent the last half hour or so catching up on my blog-reading. It feels as though it’s been a long time since I spent time reading blogs. It seems a long time since I spent time reading anything at all—anything that wasn’t my students’ essays or my students’ journals or my students’ vocabulary … More Gone Fishin’
This bumper sticker on a friend’s car: Lottery: a tax on people who aren’t very good at math.
An English professor in college once commented that it seems there is always a day, every autumn, when the leaves just fall. It’s not that none fall before that day and none after, but it does seem that, on one day, many and many and many of them fall, so that the world looks Very … More Autumn Thoughts
Bill was in the grocery store with Emma Grace and a family friend. And although it is Only November, there he was, the Christmas elf: Santa Claus himself. Said our friend to Emma Grace: And Emma, what do you think of Santa Claus? To which Emma Grace replied, without hesitation: Oh, he’s dead. He died … More Who Knew She Knew?
They decided—when was it?—that they wanted to be characters from Redwall, a delightful series of adventure novels by Brian Jacques, books that are peopled by a cross between Tolkein’s Middle Earth warriors and Lewis’s talking animals. Yes, it was sometime in late summer, perhaps, that William and Everett and their friends Andrew and Peter decided … More What To Be For Halloween, part 2
when you shave your head regularly, anyway. So here’s Bill and his office-mate. They are Blue Men, of which there are usually three. But you can’t get just anyone to cover his Entire Head in blue make-up (yes, they make that) and go to work like that. Not everyone will do that. But I really … More What To Be For Halloween
