NYT 2/25/10  “The man accused of shooting two children Tuesday at Deer Park Middle School was allowed to enter and leave the building hours before he opened fire in the parking lot… did not know what motivated Mr. Eastwood to open fire in the parking lot …”
NYT 2/24/10 Front page: “FEARING LIMITS, STATES WEAKEN GUN [...]

This is what I would write to a friend, if a friend is someone I would want to know, and would want to know from me:

I would write that everything they say is true, is true. The fairytale part that is, but what they leave out, is that it is hard work. Very hard work. [...]

The way to the Himalayan heights passes through Nepal’s villages, and there is much reason to make a village the night’s campsite. Not the least of which is the universal tea house. It’s elementary economic geography that in a country where walking is the only manner of travel that villages would find themselves roughly separated [...]

The letter copied below was written (on a typewriter with handwritten corrections in blue ink) by Sidney Hyman (he is probably about 94 years old now), dated February 8, 2010 (and I am pretty sure he was not aware that this was my birthday). I visited Sidney in Chicago during the fall of 2007. He [...]

Wishes; do six-year-old girls have wishes? Did I have wishes that I can remember from around first Grade? Mrs. Smith asked who could spell squirrel, Joann said immediately, “S..Q..U..I..R..R..E..L, skwerl,”  and I wished it had been me. I wished not to be in short pants. I didn’t wish to take a nap while Mrs. Smith [...]

“Did I hear you right? You are going to take our savings, buy a Harley and do a road tour? To where? For why? We have a two year old, I’m pregnant again, and you need some air in your face? Dude, this is serious stuff.”
“Hon, my thirtieth birthday is coming up and I haven’t [...]

In the normal course of a middle class American life twenty-five-year-olds would be in their third year of their first job after college and dating would be about long-term relationships. These dudes didn’t go to college, they are musicians.
They call themselves “The High Jinx” and their own songs are often about getting high. It’s a [...]

Scott Purvis had the biology classroom next to mine at coffin corner. He had an iguana in the room and let the adolescents study their own juices under the microscopes. We shared a teachers lounge a little closer to the heart of the school with such as Obbie Oberland, the English teacher that delighted the [...]