It's Time to Stop Taking Teachers For Granted
While driving, I’ll sometimes be idling behind a car with a “26.2” sticker on its rear bumper. The sticker signifies that someone with...
- Aug 21
Children Can Help Us Find the “Why”
Rosie and Della, two of our granddaughters, individually fixate on a single word that provides a clue to her personality. Rosie, the...
- Jul 30
Setting the Stage for a Luminous Future
Mort's birthday poem for Elaine You’ve had many successes in trying to improve education To get it in a productive groove. And,...
- Jul 25
Remedial Education for the Palate
A few nights ago, Elaine and I, along with two friends, drove to a restaurant in the heart of South Philly, an area filled with exotic...
- Jun 21
A Cult-ivated Future
Because of respect for confidentiality, I won’t reveal my source for the following information. I was going to cite respect for...
- May 20
The Dogs' Honest Truth
Two years ago, checking out condos before returning to live in Philadelphia, we became especially interested in one having many features...
- May 3
An Aquatic Hypocrite
I won’t define my sense of what hypocrisy is here, but I’ll end the piece with a prime example of it. The road to that unseemly quality...
- Apr 18
Wordle as Aggression
A few months ago, when somebody introduced me to the word game called Wordle, I embraced it the way many Republicans fall head over heels...
- Mar 30
Spring Garden Street is a Garden of Urban Life
Among its features, Philadelphia has cultivated awareness of nature by naming major streets “Chestnut,” “Walnut,” “Spruce,” and “Pine.”...
- Mar 24
Pocketology
Sports jackets are meant to be worn, not exiled permanently to the bleak interior of an unexplored closet. In those more social,...
- Jan 13
Nostalgia for Less Grouchy Days
In stressful times, we tend to recall fondly the “old days.” Those reminiscences are meant to contrast placid then with troubled now....
- Dec 27, 2021
Super Market Shopping: The Aisles of Exploration
For as long as I can remember, I’ve tried to invent distractions to spice up some of the boring, repetitive activities of life. Usually,...
- Dec 11, 2021
Check Your Fortune, Cookie?
Performing rituals, particularly harmless and generally unimportant ones, has the power to assure us of life’s continuity. When we repeat...
- Dec 1, 2021
School Board (Never Bored)
We had a little ritual. Sometimes, when meetings got contentious, my colleague would lean over and whisper, “This is a thankless job!”...
- Nov 16, 2021
Wise (and Why’s) Grandparenting
Grandparenting provides an endless series of satisfying experiences exceeding anything I could have anticipated. I scrum around with a...
- Oct 22, 2021
Planning: Habit or Necessity?
My wife’s retirement has confirmed what my high school science teachers taught me, that nature really does abhor a vacuum. This...
- Oct 10, 2021
Philly’s Washington Square
As a kid, I stopped in at my grandparents’ house at 704 Pine St. about twice a month. Besides the pleasant family re-connection, there...
- Oct 2, 2021
What Ever Happened to…?
Lately, when I awaken briefly in the middle of the night, it’s become common to find myself in “whatever happened to?” land. Names that...
- Sep 14, 2021
Lessons Learned
Gripped by Covid overload, what the disease has revealed about our society is the last thing I want to write about. But sometimes the...
- Aug 31, 2021
Baseball and Families
Watching the Phillies on TV the other night, I focused on a close-up that demanded my attention. A dad (or some insensitive version of...