Category: biographical
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Still enjoying my conversations in the school lunchroom. About a week ago, I sat down with a class of 1st-graders. Adopting the closest thing I have to a cheerful and enthusiastic tone, I say, “How’s school today guys?” Little girl across from me immediately gives an emphatic thumbs down, like John McCain voting against his…
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Don’t worry, I’m a subscriber, so didn’t pay anywhere near $10.99 for the current New Yorker. Although, considering that it’s a weekly and I’ve usually not glanced at the last one when the next one shows up, a financial adviser would probably tell me not to renew. The main loss would be that I don’t…
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I ran into my stepkid at a coffee shop. Are the bonds of step-fatherhood severed by divorce? I’m still claiming him. I was nursing 2.5 cups of coffee through around 25 pages of a book, Donald Hall‘s A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety. It’s a sequel of sorts to Essays After Eighty, which I…
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Now and then, when one of the suburbanites in my life asks how long it’s been since I was last pistol-whipped within a block of my house in Minneapolis, I work into the conversation how I like taking the bus to get around: I point out that, for seniors, it’s two dollars for all you…
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Had the kids in stitches at the supper table tonight. Would likely be pleased with myself if I’d been trying to be funny.
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I edited a joke and texted it to my sister, a retired chemistry professor. Slow day, needed a brightener, and figured she’d deliver. Yes, it developed that the dots, blinking in real time, were an alert: rant gestating. But you can get enough of those from her brother.
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I understand Taylor and Travis are hitched. I have an online subscription to the NYT and can tell you: that organ of journalism is on the case. I’m the better for it, as I now know that Cornelia Street is in Greenwich Village, not London, as for some reason I had supposed. Maybe it’s because…
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I’ve been with my daughters in Oregon, where their high school ultimate frisbee team was in a national tournament. And they won it! They get annoyed when relatives think they must be playing frisbee golf or something, so if you want to see what “ultimate” looks like, here’s one of their games from Friday’s pool…
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Not until now have I felt the need to post one of those envy-inducing social media pics exhibiting my advanced culinary skills and elevated lifestyle. Yes, that is today’s lunch up there. Fyi, I enjoyed it with a Gatorade Red. If anyone is interested, DM me for the recipe. I don’t recommend it, but if…
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Actually, I don’t think it’s true that “you can achieve anything if only you set your mind to it.” I can’t remember my last job title but for sure it wasn’t American League MVP. Not to compare myself to an exemplar of genius, but Einstein never found his Grand Unifying Theory of Everything, and moreover…
