A teacher’s reflection — Back in May 2020, I wrote this about the pandemic: In general, things are neither as terrible as people fear nor as wonderful as they promise. That’s usually the case, but there are always exceptions. Could this be the exception? Covid-19 clearly was. It was as terrible as we feared…

What accounts for the quality of a person’s affection? — Winter is treadmill running season for me, and given my nerdy, guilt-driven personality, I can’t just watch silly Netflix series for entertainment. I also must watch educational type content -you know, documentaries and such- to justify the just-for-escapism screen time. Lately, I’ve alternated 45-minute-long episodes of the soapy series Firefly…

Will it ever subside? — If you’ve read anything about Diego, my developmentally disabled son and the inspiration behind this publication, you know that he’s keen on birthdays, all birthdays, but especially his own. Diego swells my heart and drives me crazy with his birthday obsession. Others — family, friends, acquaintances, strangers —only experience the…

Addressing my fears and need for approval — I had a hard time deciding how to structure this list. My first thought was to start with the great and end with the pathetic, to then conclude with how I would do better or different in 2023. But the pathetic is always more relatable, especially if, like me, you’re…

A teacher’s take — Allow me to establish two things from the get-go: Quiet quitting is nothing new. Though the term is new-ish, it relates to age-old human realities: ever-changing priorities and the fact that time is limited. There’s no agreed-upon definition for quiet quitting. …

I just don’t get it — In line at Starbucks the other day, the young woman ordering had a tiny dog (a Chihuahua I think) in her arms. The cashier was all ooh and aww, and they got to babbling about their dogs. Then the cashier pulled up a photo of his dog on his cell…

What pounding the ground can do to you — By the time I picked up running fifteen years ago, I already had a special relationship with words and language. In college, one of my majors was French and I’d also gotten a graduate degree in translation and interpretation. I journaled intermittently and was my extended family’s editor-in-chief. But I…

Or was it the pilot? — Sometimes things work out for you and you know a higher power had a hand in it. It happened to me when I switched to an earlier flight from Denver to New York and lived to tell about it. …