It’s been close to two years now since I bought my first house. It’s a ninety year-old Craftsman-style home on Main Street in a small city in Wisconsin, full of hand-rubbed plaster walls, oak built-ins, and birdseye maple floors. Despite my occasional restlessness and a love for urban life, this is well and truly my [...]
Archive for the ‘Life’ category
All Together Now
Last night the hubs and I took a brief respite from our ongoing 30-Rock marathon to watch “Commune”, a 2005 documentary about Black Bear Ranch, a commune that was started in the late-60′s in Northern California. While the film touches on the political and social upheaval of the time, most of the focus is on [...]
A process, an end, a beginning
The college search and decision process represents, for some kids, a significant threshold. They begin to move from the present emotion of adolescence to the future rationale of adulthood. They have to consider their own identity in an attempt to find a cultural and academic match. They must take a sobering account of their performance and [...]
The old fools
The Old Fools by Philip Larkin What do they think has happened, the old fools, To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose It’s more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools, And you keep on pissing yourself, and can’t remember Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose, They could [...]
Oldness and sex
Some colleagues and I were just out having dinner and out-olding one another. One woman said she was glad to finally be old enough that our college students look like tiny soft little babies who could not possibly be sexually attractive to anyone. I responded that I feel so old I see them as being [...]
Of Butterflies’ Wings
I went roller skating for a friend’s birthday party. So. Much. Fun. Exactly like this. Okay, maybe not quite. Also, it was strange. Oh, how youthful feelings of inadequacy came flooding back in a tidal wave. The moment I walked into the building, I noticed people I know — some very well, some just tangentially [...]
What I think of this
The waitress walked up and surveyed our table. “What do you think of this?” she asked. I had my head down trying to sort out what seemed like a byzantine list of options. To assemble my custom burger, I had to choose from five different categories of exotic ingredients. I was overwhelmed on page two [...]
Little town, I love you
As a girl growing up in Plains states, I thought all I could ever want was Brooklyn. I never dreamed of living in New York City in general, just Brooklyn. I loved movies set in Brooklyn and people from Brooklyn. It just seemed so obviously better than all other places on Earth that nothing else [...]
Holding out for a hero
When I was in sixth grade, the teacher gave us a writing assignment. “Write about one of your heroes,” she said. As my classmates immediately thought of firemen, their grandma or Jesus, I had to ponder my options. Joan of Arc? Harriet Tubman? Louis Braille? Superman? Athena? Woody Guthrie? Teresa of Ávila? The list was [...]
