“Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.” –Matsuo Bashō On the day the Lord hath risen, I lost my cell phone between the hours of 8:31 a.m. and 10:38 a.m. The phone, unfortunately, has been missing in action for two days now with no sign of resurrection. I am now […]
Leaving the restaurant, I saw the poster of a rugby player, covered in mud, hair matted, missing teeth, eye swollen shut. He looked like hell, and I laughed. One of my sons wanted to know what my deal was. I was more surprised at not being able to explain handily, than he was at the […]
Almost every day, by foot or car, I pass by a stretch of egg-colored Lustron houses with square steel exterior tiles in pale yellow, Robin’s egg blue, and dove grey. The porcelain enameled-steel readymade homes were a modernistic solution to the housing shortage many folks, especially GIs, faced after returning home after World War II. […]
Going to see a celebrity in a field you do not follow is a strange thing. There are…expectations. Recognition, to start with; maybe admiration, even excitement. I had no idea who the two celebrity fishermen were, who would be at the sporting-goods superstore in town. My elder son, who has fished a couple of times […]
“The midnight streetlight illuminating the white of clover assures me I am right not to manicure my patch of grass into a dull carpet of uniform green, but to allow whatever will to take over.” “Against Lawn” by Grace Bauer In mid-April, the distant ritual buzz of lawn mowers droning in […]
Classical economics begins with a central assumption that all people everywhere are rational. However, one of the chief problems with rationality is that it is relative. Rationality assumes that people consciously establish and verify all the facts of a given situation and use logical assumptions to arrive at a conclusion. Not only that, they revise […]
In November 2017, I learned that my faculty position at St. Louis Community College would be one of 58 eliminated in a reduction in force. One year later, I sat with Michaella A. Thornton at Hartford Coffee in south St. Louis to talk about how we had each experienced, processed, and reckoned with the layoff […]
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was in selected theaters Wednesday night. I got my elder son to join me by telling him the Fathom event was a one-night showing. Actually, the film will be available on a streaming service soon, and I was a little embarrassed when it turned out to be a two-hour-and-12-minute […]
