Is it me, or does everyone have eccentric friends? Subscribers to this blog have met Neil, the most gentle of men who, among other adventures, nevertheless slashed a series of face-smacking branches extending out on to the sidewalk he regularly
People in my life
One-Liner
November 15, 2018 Through my sophomore and possibly junior year of high school, I argued in favor of America’s involvement in Vietnam. I also argued on the wrong side of history leading up to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. I was persuaded by
A Time for Euphemisms
1 Toward the end of eighth grade, when kids turn fourteen, a girl I’ll call Delia volunteered to visit my home one afternoon a week to read class assignments to me. I was new to America and to blindness. During our reading sessions, work gave way to
A Lexicon of Character Formation
Mimicry is one of many skills I don’t possess. Even so, the people I’ve known over the course of my life have made their mark on me, and I hear it in the expressions I’ve co-opted from them. I’ll always recall from my childhood with affection and
Young at Heart
“The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.” That’s the Lord Henry Wotton character speaking in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey. I think of my father who, as he approached ninety, insisted he felt no different
The Criminal Receptionist
Antonia, a warm, famously doe-eyed woman in her thirties, was one of three receptionists at my former law office. Their long desk was in an area accessible to members of the public, while the rest of us worked safely behind code-locked doors. We