For the better part of two decades I have been chronicling my New Years Resolutions, for better or for worse. New Years Resolutions This year is no different. Gentle and esteemed reader, I present to you my resolutions for 2018. Wish me luck! P.S. Although Elizabeth did buy that huge stuffed lion as a 2017 … Read more
RIDING AWAY FROM THE CHURCH: Colin and Katherine are off and biking towards future adventures in their marriage! November 30, 2017 Dear Colin, I enjoyed your wedding last weekend; thank you for inviting me. I remember getting married on June 21st, 2003 — how stressful it was to be the center of so much attention, … Read more
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” — Heraclitus We were for many years blessed at the high school where I work with an excellent security officer, Mr. Dana Eaton. Dana was tasked with the sometimes unpopular job of being the … Read more
“The dream of reason produces monsters” Francisco Goya I have always resisted interpreting my dreams, or seeking to tie large meanings to one’s life from the subterranean miasma from which dreams arise, half remembered upon waking. I know Jungians and the like place huge importance on dreams, and in endlessly analyzing them. I am not … Read more
As is the tradition, I post my New Year’s Resolutions for this coming year, 2017. But unlike in past years, I find I don’t have much to say. Am I in a “dry period” with regards to personal growth? Or are things going well and I don’t feel the need to change much? No need to … Read more
Flowers left on Margaret Mary Geib’s grave on October 31, 2016 by Richard John Geib. Twenty years, mom. Twenty years ago today you died. Your body eaten up by cancer like an old fence eaten up by termites. Twenty years is a long time. You have missed the weddings of your children and the births … Read more
Happy 20th birthday to my personal webpage! On October 9th of 1997 I started this online experiment. The date today is October 9th in 2016. Twenty years afters its inception my online presence still lives. And today I celebrate this fact. Over twenty years my work on rjgeib.com has waxed and waned, to be certain. … Read more
I recently finished Gerald Marzorati’s new book, “Late to the Ball: Age. Learn. Fight. Love. Play Tennis. Win.” I enjoyed the tennis references, of course, but what I most enjoyed were the meditations about retirement and aging, friendship and connection — and on learning to do anything new and grow in the process. For Marzorati, this … Read more
We approach the twentieth anniversary of my humble domain, rjgeib.com. It has been my creative home on the Internet. I have worked on it, then let it languish; its progress has mirrored that of my own life. My online life waxes and wanes, largely dependent on what is happening in my offline life. Extreme exertion … Read more
“To find oneself more than a bit lost — while disorienting and even frightening — is far from irremediable.” It was sometime in early 1997 as I walking westbound on Superior Avenue in Newport Beach, California. My sister and her then fiancé happened to be driving by, saw me, pulled over, and offered to drive … Read more
Happy New Year, everyone! I indulge in the annual list of ways in which I can improve my life. Cheers!
The main reason I enjoy Facebook, despite all the petty posts and sophomoric banter, is that I can keep tabs on my former students, to some degree. Christian P.? What college is he attending again? Megan L.? Is she still with the Italian boyfriend and working for the Red Cross in London? Facebook usually allows … Read more
Today I read yet another article about cord cutting, and how the business model for cable TV in the United States is changing. The idea that one must pay for many channels in which one has no interest in order to get the few one does. The cable companies are, they say, fighting a long rearguard … Read more
Julia and friend as beginners at tennis. I remember trying to teach Julia how to hit a tennis ball when she was around three years of age. It was a disaster. A torrent of tears. Lots of blaming daddy. Julia was really too young still to hit a tennis ball with any success. Julia has always … Read more
MOTHER AND SON: 19 YEARS AND COUNTING Children think their parents know all the answers. Their parents are pillars of rock to which they can tether themselves in the storms of youth. When all falls to the ground in seeming ruin, parents still stand tall. It gives them comfort. It makes them feel safe. I … Read more
I have written hundreds and hundreds of college recommendation over the past fifteen years. Each fall the task of writing these letter has always been above and beyond the teaching and grading of my Advanced Placement students in public school classes that were significantly larger in number than the twenty six the College Board urged. (My principal would … Read more
A TALE OF TWO POSTS In the past few months, I have added two posts of note to my webpage. The first deals with reflections on my personal past, my professional present, and…. the future? The second deals with the last days of my friend, Chris Prewitt, and his sudden and tragic death. Not many … Read more
It has been a long winter. The first week of this year 2008 I gnashed my teeth at trying to take care of a child with pneumonia at the same time as write no less than 20 college letters of recommendation. What an ugly blur of a week that was! I felt I had to … Read more
2008: A FRESH START“They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”Andy Warhol My New Year’s Resolution’s have traditionally seen spectacular successes that made the whole exercise worth it – and a few utter failures which are recidivist in nature. In focusing on the failure, I wonder at why I … Read more
Thieves broke windows in late night school burglary. CLASSROOM BREAK-IN I arrived to my school as usual yesterday morning, Friday September 7, 2007. But as I turned the corner towards my classroom I encountered not the empty twenty steps of sidewalk that leads to my place of work but instead a throng of school district … Read more
“THE GOOD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GREAT!”“There was nothing I was not up for teaching…boundless energy and ambition!” THE PRODUCTIVE DECADE OF ONE’S THIRTIES I used to tell myself I was one of those relatively few people who loved their jobs. For me teaching was more vocation than job, and the boundary between … Read more
10 THINGS TO DO BEFORE I DIE My step-sister Kimberely asked me to identify twenty things I wanted to do before I died. I decided to think up ten but could not get past eight. I did, however, come up with a lot that I had already done or did not wish to do. Here … Read more
“A man cannot free himself from the past more easily than he can from his own body.” André Maurois “What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to … Read more
“A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live… When we are not living up to our true vocation, thought deadens our life, or substitutes itself for life, or gives in to life so that our life drowns out our thinking and stifles … Read more
“There’s too much music everywhere. It’s horrible stuff, the most noise conveying the least information. Kids today are violent because they have no inner life; they have no inner life because they have no thoughts; they have no thoughts because they know no words; they know no words because they never speak; and they never … Read more
In reviewing pieces I had written many years ago, I read with much interest the exasperated musings of a beginning teacher and the grade chase. On the other side of that hill now as a veteran teacher, I am satisfied that I have made my peace with “the system” without having lost my soul to … Read more
This is a new blog offering on my domain. I am not sure to what use I will put it, but I have some ideas… If you happen to be around, go ahead and leave a comment! I will read it with much interest. Until Laters, Rich Geib