We Are Flesh and Bone and … Data
Handing over your data is as obligatory as a patdown by law enforcement; we resist at our own risk.
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Defiant Happiness
Does joy flow from temperament, then, or from grace? What does it matter? Joy defies gravity. Poised at the edge of a cliff, you need it more than ever.
Recipe Stories: Happiness Tacos
Photo by John Griswold https://commonreader.washu.edu/app/uploads/2023/03/Recipe-Stories-Happiness-Tacos.mp3 It can be hard to match the quality of tacos with that of your happiness sometimes. I thought the tacos and margaritas festival would do it: Not just food and drink, but a taco-eating contest, hot pepper-eating contest, live music,…
Why Woke Language Backfires
If this is our notion of inclusivity, we are doomed.
Being Funny
There are indeed joke-telling and joke-writing techniques, but the comic sensibility cannot be taught. Finding something funny in the first place—seeing the absurdity, the irony, the analogy, the edge—is what matters, and it emerges from a combination of detachment, affinity, and wry intelligence.
Home Again
Here I am then, standing at a podium while an organizer makes an introduction so overly generous that out-of-town attendees wonder what is happening.
Wild Flowers
Wildflowers are simple. They are flowers that grow in the wild, not where we demand them to grow. They do not obediently line our sidewalks, arrange themselves by order of height in our mulched beds, fill our wrought iron boxes, spill over our terra cotta pots. Wild means self-determined, free, priceless.
Do We Make Ourselves Too Comfortable?
Comfort is supposed to follow a challenge, not replace one. Tension, risk, and physical or emotional discomfort are parts of larger experiences that are worth having, so there is no need to dread or avoid them. With a shift in focus, they shrink in proportion to the part that matters.
Land Where Our Children Kill
Instead of isolating specific, idiosyncratic causes, we have to look at the larger framework. Because something about where U.S. society has landed is giving dark emotions more of a foothold. Resentment and despair are not new. Guns are not new. But shootings at this level and frequency are.
“Making Memories”
The memories I treasure tend to follow some sort of risk or effort; they feel earned. Like making a painting or a sweater or a wooden box, they rewarded and commemorated an investment of time, patience, sweat, courage, and attention.