I sometimes wonder what the founding mothers and fathers of our country might think of our modern world. It seems that some (Franklin and Jefferson) would revel in it. Others might be skeptical. Consider that a flight from Philadelphia to Boston takes only 90 minutes, a journey that took John Adams the better part of…
It isn’t easy to illustrate the Butterfly Effect of Reading with concrete examples. Too often, when I think of it, I have traversed many branches, come to many forks in the road, and am fairly lost, no longer able to recall the chain of events that led me to the current book. But a recent…
The New York Times got my dander up this morning with an article on how Houston Astros players apologized for the sign-stealing that helped them win the 2017 World Series. No one seems to call this cheating. They call it sign-stealing, and in baseball, stealing is, after all, part of the game. “What we did…
I read in the New York Times that Roger Kahn died. The author of The Boys of Summer (the #2 book on Sport Illustrated’s 100 Greatest Sports Books, right after A. J. Lieblings The Sweet Science) was 92 years old. Earlier in the week I read obituaries for Gene Reynolds (M*A*S*H), and Kirk Douglas, who…
Can we all agree that having more than one title for a magazine article is confusing and counterproductive? I try to read a feature article every day from the magazines piled on my desk and the ones taking up virtual bits on my phone. The problem for me is that the title of the article…
It has been a while since I last wrote about my bullet journal experiment. The first year of that experiment was a learning experience. Some parts of my bullet journal worked well; others went completely unused. For 2020, I started a new bullet journal with the goal of incorporating the lessons I learned over the…
I was reading John McPhee’s wonderful essay “Heirs to the General Practice” about rural family practice doctors when I came across a passage in which one of the saw bones described his breakfast as a piece of coffee cake and some bacon. Immediately I craved coffeecake for breakfast. Ignoring the lingering pain for some minor…
One of the worst feelings is waking up in the middle of the night to the echo of a short, sharp CHIRP! I lay there in the dark and wonder Did I just hear that, or was it the echo of a dream? I am about to drift back off to sleep when–CHIRP!–there it goes…
I sometimes wonder if professional baseball players envy their teammates. Does a career average player look to a superstar and wonder: Why can’t I be that good? What’s holding me back? Envy isn’t an emotion that I am proud of, but sometimes that painful awareness of a talent I don’t possess and someone else does…
I have often daydreamed about buying a typewriter and using it to write all of my first drafts. With a typewriter, I’d have no distractions from email, or social media. I wouldn’t be tempted by the apps on my computer. I’d slide in the paper and start typing. Of course, things like typos and corrections…