Stopping to Watch a Summer Storm

The best summer storms are the ones witnessed with a feeling of safety but intense enough to make you feel like you’ve got a little skin in the game. Read More

Singing Without Shame or Inhibition

I loved singing as a child but by my mid-teens I decided not to do it publicly anymore even though it was one of my biggest sources of joy.

I became more inhibited.

For the twenty years that followed that source of joy became a source of apprehension. Read More

Shorter Days Can Be as Sweet as a Smushed Tiger Cake

Every year immediately following the summer solstice I hear someone complain that the days are now getting shorter. It’s particularly jarring this year contrasted against the palpable enthusiasm everyone has with the end of pandemic-related restrictions.

It takes a special kind of downer to cry over slightly shorter days when a year ago they were alone drinking spiked seltzer and complaining that Zoom makes their neck look fat. Read More

Buddy the Beefalo Must Never Die

By now, fine reader, I assume you’ve heard that Buddy the Beefalo was captured after 8 months on the run from the police.

What finally took Buddy down when the harsh New England winter could not? Love.

Buddy was caught mid-coitous seducing a local farmer’s herd with his bad boy antics. Read More

Assembling the Herd

Adult vaccination isn’t the end of our fight against Covid-19 but it’s an important turning point.

We’re hopeful our newborn will get antibodies from breast milk but only herd immunity offers a foreseeable path to protection for my two-year-old. Read More

In the Belly of the Beast

I was expecting a bigger reaction when I took my two-year-old daughter inside the belly of a 60-foot-long sperm whale named Conny.

To be clear, she didn’t like it.

But, she was still reeling from the horror of being approached by Mr. Peanut in front of Oscar Meyer’s Weinermobile so it’s understandable that it jarred her moving so suddenly from broad daylight into the sort of darkness you’d expect inside a 60-foot whale’s belly. Read More

Commemorating Our Pandemiversary

It isn’t in Americans’ nature to dwell on past unpleasantries.

Uncle Sam is never painted with a teardrop tattoo though he could certainly lay claim to plenty. Read More

The Month that Never Ends

February is living up to its reputation as an impossibly long month.

Though only 28 days long, no other month packs quite as much of a punch as February. Read More

Living in Interesting Times

We live in interesting times, which may be a blessing or a curse – only history will know. Read More

Arguing “Do Your Research” Really Means “Think Like Me”

“Do your research” is to online arguments as “you’re not my father” is to arguments with stepdads.

Both expressions seek to immediately end disagreements by referencing absent authorities that usually don’t hold up to scrutiny and may never be seen again. Read More