A teen boy broke his leg recently, had surgery, and three weeks later is still bedridden. He wanted to tell me something, he said seriously. I am his primary caregiver, as the phrase goes, which is to say his father and his nurse. As I was shutting the curtains to…
Photo by Rob Hampson on Unsplash. “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…
“Creating a narrative based on one photograph can be challenging. In this case, my imagination placed me in the heart of the main subject dreaming of his old country, Mother Russia. Or perhaps he imagines talking to his dearly departed mamma, saying, ’Mama, I love You.’” (Photo by Donato DiCamillo)…
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,…
An advertisement illustration for Lustron Homes from the late 1940s. 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…
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…
Photo by Daniel Watson on Unsplash. “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…
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.
“The living conditions may likely seem less desirable for those who have never been to Cuba, but for visitors like me, the beauty lies beneath, in the warmth of its culture and its amazing people.” (photo by Donato DiCamillo)…
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…