Category: memoir
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Memoir: My father’s gift and my son’s (1971/2025)
My son and his wife don’t exchange gifts. They think that love expressed in material forms merely creates more clutter in a surfeited world. They might also tell you that the day-to-day “gifts” of mutual respect, service, and sacrifice are the only true tokens of a loving partnership. Not I. I was programmed by post-war…
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Memoir: Some education things I left behind (1994-2021)
My friend Laura, who still teaches at the school where I served the last 27 years of my career, texted. She wanted to know if I’d be interested in the $30/hour job of supervising exams. Test administration was the worst part of my job, the part called “summative assessment” that really meant “Son we’re gonna…
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Memoir: Stranger in a strange land (1978-79)
“I have been a stranger in a strange land.” -Exodus 2:22” It wasn’t strange for me to feel estranged in the years leading up to becoming an actual stranger in a strange land. Yes, right there, in my neighborhood, I often felt the odd one out. At preschool, I learned the importance of engaging with…
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Memoir: Words to live by, Part 1 (1965-72)
I knew just what he meant when he said, “It’s so easy to love. The only hard thing is to be loved.”
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Memoir: Protest (1983)
For our protest to matter, it has to be reported. We hope the Daily Pantagraph, or at least the Vidette, will cover it tomorrow.
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Memoir: What I Wouldn’t Do
This ambassador-neighbor would do what I would, but cannot–study my dear offspring and act compassionately for them “on the spot,” not ineffectually hearing about their trials and opportunities weeks or months later, or at all.
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Memoir: Pain management (1973-present)
Whichever hobbyhorse you ride–sports, gardening, music, travel, baking, arts and crafts, your dog or your cat–you ride it away from dukkha.
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Memoir: A thought experiment concerning Dad (1973-80)
How would my father be doing if he were alive and well today, if he hadn’t died at 59 of bowel cancer? I think Dad might have adapted pretty well to the current culture. Several times, I saw him accommodate powerful changes in mores that happened around him in the 1970s. A professional adaptation occurred…
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Memoir: My mother’s glory (1964)
The 1964 photograph shows mom’s hair appropriately covered on her way into church. Once seated next to my father in the pews, all the ladies surrounding her will have their heads similarly covered. Later, in the late 1960s, I notice some women wlll daringly sport lace doilies pinned on their heads–coverings in-name-only, for one totally…
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Memoir: Caught professionally off-guard (1987)
My first year of high school teaching was in the all-boys Fenwick, where I taught English and coached the Speech and Debate teams. I’d brought speakers from the community to my classes –war veterans, businessmen, and controversially, an atheist and a communist–to broaden the boys’ minds about the outside world. While the Fenwick fathers indulged…
The Wikiness 