Because the Catholic kids had catechism on Thursday, we Protestants got Release Time, also on Thursday, so teachers had an easy day. I was all about Bible stories, less so about the mile walk from Campbell School to First Presbyterian…
Blog Archives
Organizing my mind
I must have been about eight when I read a passing reference to a boy who organized his mind every evening. Unbelievably, the writer barreled on without explaining how, but the project seemed so essential that I decided I must…
Tagged with: eight years old, Furness Shakespeare Library, Libraries, Organizing the mind, University of Pennsylvania
Posted in Just life
Posted in Just life
It must be a memory
I’m sure I remember this, that it wasn’t a dream. What’s remarkable is the quality of sensations that are not exactly thoughts, as if they came before words. I’m very small, being held between the knees of someone much larger,…
Thoughts on a morning raking leaves
You, leaves are many, but I am relentless, almost. The number of leaves to be raked can’t be infinite, that’s impossible, but there are many, a very large number. How big is this number? A mature oak (says Wikipedia) can…
Navy English
Through the 90’s, I taught college English in Naples, Italy at a US navy base. It was a remarkable experience, a world away from the ivy-aesthetics of grad school. In a decade of relative prosperity, with a low probability of…
Tagged with: Becoming adult, Dont' Ask Don't Tell, Navy students, Teaching soldiers
Posted in Teaching fiction-writing
Posted in Teaching fiction-writing
Egyptian in Jersey
In my tucked-in corner of New Jersey, Mr. Massuda the French teacher was an exotic. He was Egyptian, and while to some students’ surprise, he didn’t walk sidewise or write on papyrus, he came trailing a romantic past. Born into…
Ambitions of a Protestant Saint
At age 9, I decided to be the first Protestant saint, which would catapult me into a new edition of A Child’s History of Heroes and Heroines. I knew this was a stretch. My Sunday school teachers had been quite…
A passion for problems
“The mark of a good scientist is enjoying problems,” my father maintained, “seeking them out.” This problem passion helped him build a distinguished career in chemical research, developing some of the drugs he used himself for cancer and Parkinsons. Unfortunately…
Tagged with: hypothetical problems, Imagination, Iron Curtain, Problem solving
Posted in Childhood fantasy, Cold War, imaginative child
Posted in Childhood fantasy, Cold War, imaginative child
What you can save in Uvita
We are staying near Uvita, on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. This morning I went to a little shop that has a couple samples of almost anything you could want. I noticed too late that the clerk was putting…
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