IT’S HARD TO admit you’re wrong. It’s especially difficult when the person criticizing you — someone you’re sure knows far less than you — doesn’t merit your respect. Like an annoying high school student. Yet some of my most powerful lessons … [Read more...] about Bethany & Sharon: When a student schools the Master
Alice Aspen March: The right kind of attention
I'M IN THE middle of the Pennsylvania countryside, not far from Lancaster. It’s July, and fields of bright green corn line the winding roads. My grandfather has finally died at the age of 96, and I’m driving to his funeral to honor him. I’m … [Read more...] about Alice Aspen March: The right kind of attention
Walt Walker: How Not to Quit Your Job
I FIRST MET Walt Walker when I was a junior at Malone College in Canton, Ohio. I was studying to be a teacher, and the requirements for an Ohio Teaching Certificate demanded I do ten weeks of student teaching. When I checked in at the front … [Read more...] about Walt Walker: How Not to Quit Your Job
Memoir: What’s in a B-210, anyway?
MY YOUNGEST BROTHER Richard once told me that I should buy a BMW. “It’s your kind of car,” he said. I’ve recently been thinking about his comment, and what he meant by it. So I asked a friend of mine who loves BMWs to explain why it’s such a … [Read more...] about Memoir: What’s in a B-210, anyway?
How to Tie a Necktie
SECRETS ARE FUNNY things. All families have them. Skeletons in the closet. Things you don’t talk about in polite company. Usually, they involve sex. I suppose I was fooled when I was young by the virtual openness in our family. My father hated … [Read more...] about How to Tie a Necktie
Edna Sommers: “She was a mother to us all.”
WHENEVER WE APPROACH this time of year, I think of my first-grade classroom at Thanksgiving. The careful decorations, colorful construction paper cut into orange pumpkins bursting open, that Horn of Plenty with colorful fruit and fall vegetables … [Read more...] about Edna Sommers: “She was a mother to us all.”
