When I was young, I loved to open brand-new boxes of crayons. I loved the smell of the crayons and I loved the sharpener. I especially loved the organization of the box. Each crayon was perfect, and each row was perfectly aligned. That love of order has carried over into my adult life. There is […]
Keep Your Eye On The Ball
I write a lot of letters to my family. My book (“Can Openers: Essays on Life and Love”) is a result of those letters. I wanted to collect all of my letters, and all of my writings, in one place. I used my first book to do that. I always write a letter to my […]
My Identity Cannot Be Stolen
Recently there has been news coverage about a security breach at Equifax. 143 million people may have had some of their personal information stolen, including credit card numbers, social security numbers, and passwords. I have experienced “identity theft” twice. It isn’t fun. It also isn’t surprising, because my social security number is everywhere. It exists […]
Pedestals
I was walking through Philadelphia yesterday, and I passed a statue. Statues have been in the news a lot lately. Cities and towns all over the United States are engaged in conversations about who is/isn’t appropriate to be celebrated with a statue. I spent the rest of the day thinking about why we put people […]
When An Intruder Breaks In
“What was that?” It was the middle of the night in February 1993. Theresa and I were sound asleep, and were woken suddenly by loud noises above us. “What was that?” At first it sounded like someone was walking on the roof. There was definitely movement above us. Footsteps. The next sound that I heard […]
Beat The Traffic
I have experienced some incredible traffic jams. Some of my worst examples: On the way to a Grateful Dead concert (July 4, 1987), my friend Alan, Theresa and I got caught in the mother of all traffic jams. We exited I-95 (about 4 miles from the stadium) 5 hours before show time. We did not […]
Spider Webs
I go to a park near our home at least once a week. I take my dog there (or maybe he takes me there, I’m not sure). There is a walking trail about one mile long. There is an ice house on the trail. Ice houses were structures built before the invention of refrigerators. They […]
Radical Hospitality
(I wrote the following blog post for Broad Street Ministry in Philadelphia. They published it on their website at http://www.broadstreethospitality.org/2017/07/10/radical-hospitality/) My wife and I started volunteering at Broad Street Ministry (BSM) a few years ago. The first time I volunteered, I saw a big green sign on the wall that says “Radical Hospitality Practiced Here”. What […]
Who’s Your Tribe?
There is a fellow I know who asks people “Who’s Your Team?” What he means is “what projects are you working on, and which one is most important right now?” I work in an environment where people work on several projects at the same time. “Who’s Your Team” means that I need to identify the […]
The Luckiest Guy I Know
When Lou Gehrig retired in 1939, he made a speech that included the following words: “Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth”. Watch the speech online. It is one of the most […]
