We had our first snow of the season yesterday. That’s always an occasion worth marking. I’ve been waiting patiently for almost nine months and here it is. It’s maybe not quite as exciting as a new baby, but it’s exciting all the same. The thing is, even though it’s exciting, the first snow of the…
I heard the news earlier today that Peter Mayhew, the actor who played Chewbacca, died. When I first saw Star Wars, forty-ish years ago, I left that theater thinking that Chewbacca was the single coolest thing ever. That first impression never really changed. It might have been George Lucas who created the character, but it…
I haven’t written anything in a little bit now. Part of that has been that I’ve been busy with work and general life stuff, but part has been that all of the topics that have been presenting themselves lately have been really annoying, or at least annoying to me. I just don’t want to annoy…
Before I start, I want to acknowledge Anne Peterson’s piece How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation and Tiana Clark’s piece This is What Black Burnout Feels Like. This essay isn’t exactly a response to those writers, but reading their works helped me to finally focus this essay, which I’ve tried to write many times with…
I wasn’t on the editorial side of opinion writing for very long, but a conversation did come up about publishing anonymous op-eds. At the time, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it- if the person was risking their career or their safety, wasn’t it our job as journalists to share their views while…
A few days ago I posted a video on Facebook of Robert Mueller, former director of the FBI and currently the special counsel investigating the Trump Administration. In the video, Mueller is giving a speech about the future of the FBI as a counterterrorism force. Of course, the word “future” is a relative term. The…
I first read A Wrinkle In Time when I was a kid, probably ten or eleven years old. I liked it. When I saw they had made a movie, I was curious. I reread the book. I still liked it. Then, I started seeing the reviews of the movie. They are mostly unkind. It has…
The other day, I ran across this headline in The Onion: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.” Of course, the story is about a mass shooting. This story originally ran almost four years ago, but they repost it every time it’s appropriate. I feel like I see it at…
New Year’s Eve has long been one of my least favorite days. There are two fairly universal traditions, drinking and staying up late. As someone who doesn’t drink at all, that holds no appeal for me. And as someone who has struggled with insomnia most of my life, I can’t get too excited about staying…
It’s going to be cold for the next week or so here in Connecticut. It’s all anyone can talk about. The normal low temperature around here is about 20 degrees. The highs are only going to be half that. The lows are going to be below zero. It might not be Minnesota cold, but it…
