I originally published this post in 2016, less than a month before Donald Trump became President. In the lead up to Election Day 2024, let's not forget what it felt like as the politics of panic, exploitation, and fear mongering took hold.
A scientist, a designer, and an olfactory artist have teamed up to resurrect the smell of extinct flowers.
Some people get outside for fun. Others do it out of necessity. I feel a special kinship with those who show flickers of this always-burning furnace in their movements and deeds. Larry is one of them.
“We’re trying to take small steps that we can achieve,” says Buck, after taking a few laps around the Field Loop at Rikert last week. “And those small steps can build into a program that will be recognized.
To understand what you think, you need to understand what you know, which leads to what you don’t know. This is where the metacognitive “path to understanding” begins.
Many assume that introverts have less to offer than extroverts. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I’m stronger now than I was two decades ago, and more confident, too. That’s a funny thing about the practice: You lose your way in time. Try to guess a yogi’s age and you’ll probably be wrong.
I have come to the following conclusion about resilience in the face of ruinous bullshit....
This year feels different. It’s the beginning of everything that comes next. It’s the year we’ll decide whether to hang onto the place, though I’m not sure we can. With Dad gone, it feels like we’re already letting go.
We’ve been fighting for a long time, of course, and we will continue to fight until a woman no longer shoulders the blame for a man’s reprehensible behavior.
My nascent mommy fears didn’t originate the day my first child was born. Their echoes thread through ancient cradle songs in every language dating back 4,000 years.
Expendable income is nonexistent these days. Even for tooth-loss. Because everyone knows lost teeth require quarters from the Tooth Fairy, and I just spent my last two on eggs.
You’ve got to admit that nothing douses a spontaneity high like someone questioning your reason.
We’d been dealt a good neighbor hand. On a quiet gravel road in rural Vermont, this is a huge bonus.…
Holy crap, I can’t believe it’s the last week of school!! What a shitty spring we’ve had. About damn time summer showed up.
Places like these – especially the highly anticipated, rarely visited ones – have a knack for making us contemplative.
Every so often, my son steps out of his first-person-singular mindset and talks like the Lorax. Except instead of speaking for the trees, he speaks for kids.
It’s a strange thing to flip through monochromatic sections of your torso like an anatomical deck of cards.
My father died last year, on April 1st. He’s the sort of guy who would’ve had something funny to say about that. Something along the lines of “Well, folks, I guess the joke’s on me,” or “Hey, quit crying! It’s April Fool’s Day!”
The only reason I feel remotely qualified to write any of the following is because I have been a dipshit parent. On so many occasions.
When friends new to marriage ask for advice, I often say this: “When in doubt, have sex.” I believe it, too.
After two decades of a career that fit the “grownup” bill, I’ve finally figured out how not to box myself in. I’ve cast off the old reliable shoulds and plunged headlong into the unpredictable what-ifs and why-the-hell-nots.
I think it’s safe to say that sex is an important part of any healthy marriage, and that it’s worth you and your spouse going out of your way to make sure it happens often.
Why did millions of people travel thousands upon thousands of miles to this city – and to countless others around the world – on this day, in this fledgling new year? Without question, to exercise our right to speak our minds and express our hearts.
Kids are perpetually curious in the most quirky, insightful, and hilarious ways. They see the world with such stunning clarity. It’s as though the observational clockwork of their minds is more refined than ours, more pliant, less worn into predictable grooves.
Welcome to one of the inescapable truths of parenthood: What seems is not what ends up being so. What’s more, the distance between flirting and actual sex might as well be a thousand miles of impassable wasteland.
A few months ago, I spent an entire morning in my son’s bedroom repairing and repositioning half a dozen Lego creations into a pleasing arrangement on a set of shelves solely dedicated for the purpose.