Puppies
We are watching some puppies for the Guiding Eyes this week. They are cute and sleeping on my foot right now, but make a persuasive argument for having a tile f...
Category: family
Neighborhood Sports
I’ve been enamored of the Kingston Stockade since reading Dennis Crowley’s announcement of the team, but as time goes on, and as my nostalgia become...
On This Day, 18 Years Ago
The world changed: I became a father.
To Do List
Home Economics is not "Consumer Sciences"
Proud to be an American, Where What?
I overhead part of an odd conversation between No. 1 Son and No. 2 Son that came while they were preparing for bed after we’d watched The Gamers: Humans &...
Patience, Grasshopper
A little attention goes a long way. I’ve come to believe that a great deal of unnecessary coercion, what one might call excessive use of force, is directl...
Observations on Compulsory Schooling
Walking back from the bus stop, No. 2 Son, who is only just 10, looked thoughtful. A few steps later, he remarked, “School is slavery.” “It is...
My First Meaningful Project
Browsing through old photographs and found this one from 2000 of hope for the future. Her mother took the photograph. We were in Colonial Williamsburg, probably...
Need-Blind
The ocean of the Internet tosses up interesting flotsam, and then it sinks below the surface again. I read some passing reference, perhaps by Niall Ferguson, to...
In Living Memory
Number One Daughter got her first college acceptance today, from Wells College on the shore of beautiful Cayuga Lake. I need to get that FAFSA submitted. Some o...
Impropriety
News of the world is daily maddening, full of pointless cruelty. We must take our moments of joy where we find them. My sons are in the bell choir at Trinity Un...
Attention Must Be Paid
My work — the employment for which I’m paid, that is — is invisible. Nothing to see here; move along. Long ago, the company asked us to let un...
Publish, or Die Trying
My father is a Presbyterian minister, and has been for fifty years. Sometimes I hear rumors that he’s retired, but it’s a working retirement. His la...
I Wish I Could Go Back to College
No. 1 Daughter is a junior in high school this year. My how time flies. Her next act on the world stage approaches. Last year, to be helpful, because she was re...
School, a Poem
Locks us inside 3 minute breaks in between 42 minutes “School,” a poem by Number Two Daughter (13) Number Two Daughter brought this poem home from s...
To the Stranger in a Strange Land
All are welcome here. My father did not approve of locking the doors to the church. Anyone who needed to was welcome to enter. Anyone who was passing through to...
Fight the Power
Compulsory schooling is vile.