Today I took my last bike ride of the summer. I will be back in the classroom tomorrow, but this afternoon I was next to the ocean with the wind in my hair and the sun on my face. The view to my side looked something like this: It was a wonderful ride from the … Read more
Forty seven days ago I penned a visceral (for me, at least) account of the pandemic and my reaction to it. I focused on the physical aspect, explaining how I would burn off the crazy with intense and prolonged exercise. That has gone well. The simple but strenuous task of identifying and analyzing how I … Read more
I read last week a passage in actor-comedian Kevin Hart’s book “I Can’t Make This Up: Life Lessons” where he talked about losing his virginity as a teenager. Hart lost it to a girl who was acquiring a reputation for too liberally bestowing her favors upon the neighborhood boys. Hart claimed he remained friends with … Read more
There comes a time when your child wants a bit more independence. It happened with my older daughter, Julia, around the beginning of sixth grade. She would come home from school, go up into her room, close the door, and come out hardly at all for the rest of the evening. If she were hungry … Read more
The runners and bicyclists shall inherit the earth, is a truism of this Coronavirus pandemic crisis, as I see it. The hot-yoga and spin-cycle studios — the mixed martial artists and cross-fitters — the swimmers and weight-lifters — they are all shut down. The state has closed their places of business. Such exercise is almost … Read more
As the Covid-19 “shelter in place” policies stretch into weeks and months of quarantine, the schools have tried their best in the city where I live but have not produced much quality instruction. The reasons for this are many and complicated. The public schools have tried, but despite much effort the results have been poor. … Read more
Dearest Julia, I was saddened to hear you say today you felt you were unable to detach from the execrable online learning software the schools have offered up during this Coronavirus school closure crisis. You claimed, “I have deadlines; my teachers send me emails. Daddy, I need to get a good grade because that is … Read more
“Parents are the first and foremost educators of their children. Their role as educators is so decisive that scarcely anything can compensate for their failure in it.” Vatican II We are fourteen days into this home-school experiment. On March 13, 2020 the local authorities cancelled school, and we have been at home since. The government … Read more
“Improvise, adapt, and overcome.” U.S. Marine Corps Dearest Julia, So here we are in the midst of this global Coronavirus outbreak. School is cancelled — for you and I both — and we are thrown upon each other. We are to “shelter in place,” and it is just you, your sister, Mommy, and me. At … Read more
I remember reading decades ago a passage in some book where the author claimed that in response to the traumatic news of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., he went to his piano and started playing Bach. He explained there was something spiritual in Bach’s solo keyboard music which offered him profound solace in … Read more
So some ten weeks ago there was nothing. Then news of an outbreak in Wuhan, China. It spread to South Korea and Japan. Then to Iran and Italy. A ripple traveling across the globe and arriving everywhere sooner or later. Including the United States. Yesterday the nearby Cal State Channel Islands campus closed down to … Read more
“Reince Priebus.”* That is the person to blame, in my opinion. Say his name. Say it out loud. It was Reince Priebus who was the Republican Party Chairman during the 2016 presidential election when Donald Trump — real estate developer, reality TV show host, and conservative Rush Limbaugh-talk show protégé — enacted a hostile takeover … Read more
I recently read an article written by Niki Marinis who claimed that if a man was to break up with her, he should do it by email or by phone call; it would be too painful to do it face-to-face, and she would prefer he spare her the trauma of the painful conversation in person … Read more
I attended a meeting of parents for my daughter’s club soccer team last night. Much to my astonishment and chagrin, the meeting was “emotional and intense,” in the later words of the coach. Parents grew red in the face and raised their voices to each other and the coach, and for sixty long minutes it … Read more
Cognitive Dissonance: In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, or values. This afternoon I find myself suffering from cognitive dissonance. I read yesterday … Read more
I read the other day an outstanding article about abortion by the always wonderful Caitlin Flanagan — “The Dishonesty of the Abortion Debate”by Caitlin Flanagan The essay is nuanced and complicated and full of insight and intelligence. It cuts across party lines and cannot be described as pro- or anti- abortion. I live for these … Read more
“Change — how do you change yourself? It’s easy to lose yourself or never find yourself. The older you get, the heavier that package becomes that you haven’t sorted through, so you run. I’ve done a lot of that kind of running. I’ve spent 35 years trying to let go of the destructive parts of … Read more
Dear Mom, Hello. It is the 23rd anniversary of your death, and your husband and I visited your grave to pay our respects and leave flowers for you. It was a beautiful day, this October 31, 2019. Although you died at 56-years of age — decades before you should have — your peers are beginning … Read more
I read recently an article in Men’s Health titled “These Are the Unwritten Rules That All Guys Follow” that I would like to speak to — yes, I read magazines like “Men’s Health,” “Men’s Journal,” and “Maxim” on my Apple Newsfeed. They provide a welcome counterbalance to the humorless screeds (usually complaining about politics) which … Read more
I go round and round in a circle. I don’t quite know what to think about the homeless in Ventura where I live. There are new numbers of homeless people in the neighborhoods I travel in, and I have complicated and ambivalent feelings towards them. On the one hand, they are a burden to the … Read more
I did not have a good feeling about this tennis match. We were playing a men’s 4.5 USTA doubles league match against Ojai and they were always a solid squad. The competition would consist of three lines of doubles teams, and whoever won at least two out of the three is the winner. They had … Read more
In three weeks it will be 23 years since my mother died. My mom was 55-years old when she passed away from lung cancer, and I will be 55 myself in three and a half years. I was at a work training last Friday where I spoke with an English teacher from another high school. … Read more
“Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again.” Tching-Thang It is the third week of the new fall semester. The shock of the school year beginning has passed, and we are now more in the swing of things: we have found our stride, more or less. And when I say … Read more
I was cruising around my Apple News Plus feed the other day when I came across the following article “Polls, Fake News, and Trends” by Erick Erickson. Fifteen months away from the presidential election of 2020, Erickson writes the following: American voters are exhausted. They are tired of the drama. They are tired of the … Read more
Last night I was browsing the news when I came across the following article title and lede: “WHY IS JOE ROGAN SO POPULAR?” He understands men in America better than most people do. The rest of the country should start paying attention. by Devin Gordon. I had never heard of Joe Rogan — or maybe … Read more
Tomorrow is the first day of school. It is a fresh start — something we all deserve now and again. The past is past, the future is unknown, but the present is eternal. Stay present in the moment and the future will go better. With that in mind I am going to try meditating this … Read more
In a few days I start my twenty-sixth year of teaching. For all those years I have been stuck in the academic model of living: summer and winter/spring break off where I have more time free than I want, and then other times (like final exams, letters of recommendation deadlines) where I am so overwhelmed … Read more
I spent a good chunk of this summer training for my tennis team’s USTA sectional playoffs last weekend at the Costa Mesa Tennis Center. I put in the “hard yards” both on and off the court to prepare for a weekend of intense tennis against players likely better than myself. I ended up winning neither … Read more
I don’t much like hanging out at home. It has been like that since I have been an adult. The world is just too interesting to stay at home for long: there are places to go, the world to view, things to learn. And so this summer I have been in many a restaurant, coffee … Read more
As a young composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff had his first major piece (his First Symphony in D Minor) performed in 1897. It did not go well. Music critic César Antonovich Cui savaged it in a Russian newspaper: If there were a conservatory in Hell, and if one of its talented students were to compose a programme … Read more