What is a performance? It seems to me that the basic qualification for something to be a performance is that it has an audience. When I was a kid, my siblings and I would put on shows for family. It was a performance. The family, reluctant though they may have been, were audience members. When…
It has been a while since I’ve written about book that I am eagerly awaiting. In fact, I’m not sure that I’ve done it this year so far. 2020, being what it is, has gotten the best of me, and I’m behind in my reading. I’d set a goal of 110 books for the year,…
At around the time I turned 40, I went to the eye doctor, and in the silence that followed my attempt to read letters that were impractically small and blurry, I said, “Look, Doc, I’ve had perfect vision all my life. I was pilot, for crying out loud, and I could always count on my…
Last week I read The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. I’ve always enjoyed McCullough’s books (his John Adams is my favorite biography and I’ve read the book 3 times). That said, I’ve avoided The Wright Brothers because I thought to myself what else could I learn about the Wright Brothers that I don’t already know?…
Whenever I get toward the end of a notebook, I become edgy. The completist in my wants to fill every page before moving onto the next notebook. But another part of me wants to get started in a new notebook. There is something refreshing about cracking open a new notebook and scribbling on the first…
There is no escaping COVID-19. Not even in casual conversation. I’m a little reluctant to admit this, given how bad the situation is, but I am tired of all of the COVID conversations. It’s enough having to deal with the pandemic in day-to-day life: working from home, with the kids around, and planning to work…
I just did something remarkable, so much so that I had to tell you about it right away: I didn’t just toss the junk on my desk into the junk drawer. I was trying to clear off some space as a way of delaying the inevitable work I needed to do. I picked up some…
Today, in a pique of nostalgia, I found myself flipping through the 24 Field Notes notebooks that I have filled up since 2015. I’ve had this feeling lately of an accumulated mass of things I have not yet crossed off my various to-do lists. The first unchecked (or in this case, un-crossed-out) item on the…
I know this will come as news to most of my friends, family, and readers, but we have decided to leave the city for the countryside of Maine. I plan on buying a saltwater farm there, preferably somewhere in or around Brooklin, Maine. While it is true that I could work remotely, I feel that…
Mondays are notoriously precarious days. So much so that the Boomtown Rats wrote an entire song about how they don’t like Mondays. I’ve always thought this defect was baked into the fabric of the universe. The reason the week begins on Sunday is to allow for a do-over so that Mondays go more smoothly. Unfortunately,…