Category: life

  • Dad is Good at Rearing Domestic Animals

    Dad is Good at Rearing Domestic Animals

    One thing that seems so strange in retrospect is how many animals came through our home and therefore how good Dad was at rearing domestic animals. Now and again, I grew jealous of them, but I cannot deny that, generally speaking, my father was really good at rearing animals. I had, much like a halfling…

  • Paul Pelkonen is Star Wars Canon

    Paul Pelkonen is Star Wars Canon

    Remember Paul Pelkonen? The opera critic who was one of my best friends in the neighborhood? The one who had the massive heart attack at 43 and died while I was in Joplin at Creative Arts Academy? He had a huge funeral here in the community? Paul Pelkonen was well respected in the community for years,…

  • Dad is Good at Welcoming Everyone

    Dad is Good at Welcoming Everyone

    Dad had a lot of flaws when it came to making and keeping friends, but he always seemed to me to be great at welcoming everyone or at least early on he greeted everyone with a spirit of welcome that he shied away from in later years. My mother early on did the equivalent of…

  • Homeless Assistance — How to solve the housing crisis

    Homeless Assistance — How to solve the housing crisis

    I seldom write about our nonprofit work on here for various reasons, but I want to talk about homeless assistance and how to solve the homeless crisis with faithful love. For eight years or so, we’ve hosted monthly salons at our house as a maker’s day. We’ve done it every Third Saturday. If you’re in…

  • Dad is Good at Truck Maintenance

    Dad is Good at Truck Maintenance

    In that house on Circle Drive, the garage pulled into the basement where dad did truck maintenance. It’s funny because I remember that. And I remember the upstairs, the porch, the attic, my room. My memory is almost entirely blank on my parents room unless it was the one that had the green textured paint.…

  • Dad is Good at Demon Hunting

    Dad is Good at Demon Hunting

    Some of my relatives have always taken an interest in demon hunting stories, but in practice it seems my dad had a… different approach to it. I won’t mention who. However, I will say that sometimes it seems an over interest in power and control comes hand in hand with an over interest in the…

  • Dad is Good at the Basics of Life

    Dad is Good at the Basics of Life

    But there in the house that pierced the hill on circle drive, I learned the basics of life. Dad is good and taught me that sometimes there’s no other cure for pain but the hard break. He offered to pull my teeth with pliers, to tie a string to a door and slam it shut.…

  • Dad is Good at the Giant Conspiracy

    Dad is Good at the Giant Conspiracy

    My dad, among others, affirmed the big family. And sometimes this meant speaking of the giant conspiracy. This includes the people you despise, you realize. If family’s big enough, you start to think of yourself as a part of the brotherhood of mankind. The founder of my alma mater, which was a small liberal arts…

  • Dad is Good at Redefining Family

    Dad is Good at Redefining Family

    In secret soon before my father died, I was writing a memoir about him called Dad is Good. In it, I refused to talk about the daddy issues I mention elsewhere. I resolved only to talk about the qualitative goods of fatherhood in general, of my father in specific. To him. Then he died stupid…

  • Jack Skellington pumpkin carving ideas

    Jack Skellington pumpkin carving ideas

    We borrowed a pumpkin from some Jewish friends and since we were introducing an Italian and a Portuguese friend to The Nightmare Before Christmas, we came up with some Jack Skellington pumpkin carving ideas. Here’s what I carved:

  • brooklyn bridge pumpkin

    brooklyn bridge pumpkin

    Here’s a giant brooklyn bridge pumpkin to give you ideas for your Halloween — you can obviously use less pumpkins.

  • fish pumpkin carving

    Have a fish pumpkin carving from the Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze in the Hudson River Valley to give you some ideas for your Halloween this year.