It's mid-November and the shadows are long--the sun slips over the horizon less than 10 hours a day now here in these parts. It's near dark when I walk home, crossing our town green, as I do several hundred times a year. Woodland ground cover 2 (owned by maxTextures) There's mystery in the shadows. Our ancestors saw spirits, and so will you if you lurk outside during dusk. The animals are aware of you, and so, I suspect, are the trees. As winter looms, I watch the light change under my feet. (I look down a bit more now that I am getting older--the roots of the sycamore are determined to g ..read more

I wrote this in 2003, and it's not something I'm comfortable sharing. I'm sharing it anyway. Every breath we take.... It will only be up a few hours. I was a coward. A few bloody excuses. .. my family...I am not a trauma doc...my space is better served by this doctor, that one...it's been a decade since I put a chest tube in a child. You have the mobile medical unit. You know how the generators work. You are good at fixing things. They need pediatricians, there was a daycare in there. At least you have some experience in trauma.  The Executive Director, dressed in scrubs, a woman wit ..read more

I get why folks want to ban the teaching of natural selection as the driving force behind the evolution of all living things on Earth. A child who grasps natural selection faces a fundamental challenge to her place in the universe. While some folks might encourage a child's quest to seek awareness of her place in the universe, most parents (in this part of the world, anyway) already have a pretty good idea what they want their children to believe, and usually because they believe that they are looking out for the child's best interests. No one wants their baby to go to Hell, so kneel befo ..read more

"The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was." Bottom, Midsummer Nights Dream Except in June. Just about every day this week I grabbed a few small, dark cherries from the small trees lining Liberty Street--just the right bitterness to counter the almost too rich fruitiness. The sun seems to have frozen in the north, teetering a week or two before starting our slow plunge back to darkness. Life brims mid-June, feeding on the energy that bathes the Earth this time of year ..read more

I read an article on how to save time peeling garlic. There are many--just Google it and you will find almost 75 million entries.. All to "save" time. Why not enjoy the act itself? This intimate unwrapping of a clove unlike any other clove on an evening unlike any other evening with two hands unlike any other hands in the universe is a gift, given to us. Here. Now. Why rush? You are not starving if you are peeling garlic. Your guests can wait, or they can help you peel, under the fading sun as the lightning bugs emerge from the shadows. The garlic will keep. Watch the peels drift back ..read more

They come up from the depths every spring, dancing with the rising tide under a rising moon, a deadly jaunt for many of them. If I ever think I am starting to get a handle on this life thing, I stand at the edge of the bay and remember what I do not know ..read more

Dear White Men of America, I’ve broken noses, both mine and others, shoveled shit off ships in Port Newark, and worked in the projects; I know the thrill of flying off a bike then feeling the heat of asphalt build up under the leather as you tumble next to your bike down the road; I’ve been knocked out several times, smoked cigars while pissing into the Atlantic, had a man die under my hands after being shot, and yes, I play fantasy football, too. I drink too much beer, take too few vitamins, have plenty of physical scars with too little faith in the metaphorical ones, stick by my teams, love ..read more

Liked it 7 years ago.Still do. “It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.” Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle The increasing light, the returning horseshoe crabs, the bay rising, falling, and rising again, remind me what I'll forget again in a moment. If I were not mortal, the forgetting would not be sin. But I am, and it is. Bealtaine again ..read more

SatChat question, April 13, 2019 Staying ahead of the curve is adspeak used by an industry that needs you to keep turning over tools. The ed tech business runs on perceived obsolescence--if you are not on the curve, you are an inadequate teacher. There is no need for you to get ahead of the curve (whatever that means) if one has the tools to do what is needed doing here and now. Every tool has a learning curve. Every tool has limitations. Every tool used by humans is crafted by human imagination. In anatomy, a few pieces of colored chalk are better than markers when using subtle shades to s ..read more

Expo markers used on the floor to draw models of DNA replication do not come off easily. Another minor disaster in a day of teaching. Kids you love more than you know get sick. And almost always get better. And here's hoping and praying that one more does. Amen. She's going to be OK ..read more