I have mixed feelings about self-help books. I recently read a scathing piece on the self-industry which characterized self-gurus as con artists convincing you that you are inadequate so that you'll buy more products promising easy fixes. Well, some doctors sell you snake oil and some doctors make you better. So while I may have …
Home My dad made things. He still does even though he is much slower. When I was a kid, he made normal things that were a bit different. He made a divider for the living room. It created a sort of foyer. It went from the floor to the ceiling (about 8 feet tall). The …
Oh fathers. Dads. Heroes. Monsters. Step-dads. Foster dads. Father figures. Memories. Men trying to figure out what they're doing. You may be thinking about your dad today. Some dads are kind, lifting you up, and holding your hand, and believing in you no matter what. Some dads believe in you sometimes. Depending. They try. In …
When I was a toddler, my mom spent time in a hospital in Tampa. It would have been in the summer of 1971 or 72, right around the time of The Baker Act. I don't know if that had anything to do with her time in the hospital. I know that she tried to harm …
These are strange times. Everything I've thought to write seems beside the point. To say I dislike uncertainty seems silly. Few of us do. Some people say they do, but I tend think they mean uncertainty within reason. Some people shrug and say they've been working from home for years and nothing much has changed. …
I've done almost nothing creative for days. I've either been working to switch my real life classes to online class or reading about COVID-19 or taking pictures of our dogs or looking at other people's pictures of dogs. Well, I did build lots of odd, random structures out of Legos. This is why I dreamed …
My dad once told me I only got headaches because I'd seen Tylenol advertised on TV. "I've never gotten a headache," he said, "and we didn't have a TV when I was a kid." To be sure, he said it like a joke. My dad says everything like a joke. I didn't see him take …
I spent a lot of time alone as a child. The first reason is that I was an only child. But some only children are surrounded by people, cousins, neighborhood children. I have lots of cousins but they all lived hundreds of miles away. I saw a few of them when they came to see …
My mother would be 76 years old today if she were around to experience such earthly things as birthdays. Now I for one don't believe in heaven or hell, but should these places exist, do the dead celebrate birthdays? I would think not. "I'm 202 years old now, 64 of those years on Earth." Would …
It's that holiday again. Every holiday seems to come with issues, right? New Year's Day has its resolutions and people who mock resolutions. It makes Facebook hit us with the-year-in-review, which for some folks is more of a reminder-of-heartache-loss-and failure. Thanks, FB! Valentine's Day makes some lovers happy, makes some lovers guilty (gifts? argh!), and …
