I’ve lived a very full and fulfilling creative life that seems to naturally form itself around whatever I happen to be going through in life. For the past five years that creative energy has increasingly flowed towards poetry; in particular, child-friendly poetry revolving around the parenting journey from pregnancy through early childhood. I now roam the Connecticut countryside workshopping and refining a collection of poems called Baby Bump: Poems For and About Expectant Parents. It is always well-received and something that I’m increasingly proud of talking about and serious about getting ..read more

This plateau between Thanksgiving and Christmas finally permits me time to share an op-Ed recently published in The Connecticut Post and some of their regional syndicate papers. During one of our many conversations on Gratitude last month (my daughter’s pre-K theme), something flipped inside my brain and I started thinking about my hearing challenges in a whole new way. This inspired me to share my experience with Connecticut newspaper readers hoping that some might not only relate to my hearing frustrations, but also relate to my newfound perspective thereby lightening themselves of tha ..read more

I’m deeply honored to serve again as a keynote speaker at the National At-Home Dad Network’s annual convention: HomeDadCon. It will be an interactive keynote full of moments for members to share their own stories alongside mine as we talk about the magical parts of childhood. The keynote presentation takes place on Friday, September 22, 2023 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The keynote description follows along with the associated Speaker Bio: Appreciating the Poetry and Whimsy of At-Home-Dad Life Jon had Garfield. Charlie Brown had Snoopy. Calvin had Hobbes.  Chris Gaffney has wanted a comic s ..read more

It is surprisingly hard to describe my first time attending the National At-Home Dad Network’s annual conference. As I told the attendees during my keynote speech, “Stay-at-home dads are like exotic birds. Everybody knows they exist, but seeing one in the wild is completely disorienting.” It was completely disorienting to speak, drink, and dine with such a large, diverse, and enthusiastic group of men who made the same decision I made three years ago to become a full-time parent. HomeDadCon (as it’s called) was amazing, empowering, and transformative – but so unlike anything else I’ve ever exp ..read more

I’m sad that The Children’s Museum is moving from their long-term home in West Hartford at the end of the week. I’ll remember the location fondly as one of the only physical spaces to survive from my early childhood until my kids’ early childhoods nearly forty years later. Mom was passionate about scientific education in Connecticut. Before she started her thirty-year-long career at the UCONN Health Center, she was a stay-at-home mom and devoted member of The Children’s Museum where she often took me, my brothers, and our pre-school classmates. Mom passed away from pancreatic cancer before ei ..read more

Americans from every corner will come together tonight at exactly 11 PM Eastern time to see if they’ve won the Mega Millions $1 billion plus lottery drawing. I will probably forget to watch it live, but I’ll have my ticket handy for whenever I first see the winning numbers. There’s probably a number I could text to have them automatically sent to me. I’ve always loved the lottery, since the time my grandparents thought they won $35 million to every office pool and even in spite of every horrible icebreaker conversation prompt where you need to talk about what you’d do if you win. I worked behi ..read more

It was my honor to speak recently at the Connecticut Bards Poetry Review’s book launch. I am fortunate to live in such a supportive community that provides opportunities for so many unique and diverse voices to shine. The 2-minute-long video below includes a reading of a poem I wrote for our first-born child: You Started as a Secret The post A Poem for Expecting Parents appeared first on Uncommon Discourse ..read more

Welcome to the re-designed uncommondiscourse.com. This site spotlights my work as a writer and a public speaker. From 2017 through 2021, I published a weekly humor column here. It won the National Society of Newspaper Columnists’ 2019 award for Best Humor Column in its class. The entire 200-column archive may still be found here. Please take a look around the new website to learn more about my work in genres such as memoir, humor, poetry, and storytelling. Then, sign up to receive future to follow my journey and learn about future publications or performances. Thanks for stopping by. You may c ..read more

Today is the 200th consecutive Sunday that I’ve published a weekly humor column on this website. There won’t be a 201st. I’m taking a break. It’s time for me to scroll off your screen and into the sunset to wherever fate takes me next. Looking back on the 200 weeks since I started, it’s amazing how much my life has changed. For starters, I’ve conceived and fathered two kids, quit my job to be a stay-at-home dad, survived the first several waves of a global pandemic, bought a “new” house while selling my old house, and got a remote control from my cable company that lets me talk to it (even tho ..read more

My house needs a new roof – as soon as the custom glass skylight is repaired. We didn’t know it was custom glass until we went to get it fixed and nobody wanted to touch it. Once that’s done we’ll have to repaint the cathedral ceiling in the living room where there’s water damage. That’s annoying because we just painted the entire room ten months ago when we first moved in. And our pool needs resurfacing. We negotiated a credit for half of that cost after the inspection but we spent that money on repairs that weren’t disclosed or caught in the inspection: fixing the sewer line and waterproofin ..read more