Parenting “expert” that I purportedly am, I never managed to choose age appropriate books to read to my kids. I’m not particularly proud of this. At seven and eight, they heard Flowers for Algernon, a poignant book with any number of inappropriate themes for recent kindergarten graduates: The beloved narrator plummets
Once upon a gentler time before “Kill the Ref!” became the norm, parents used to chat amicably on the sidelines while their little ones imitated hordes of lemmings on the soccer pitch. Adorable seven-year-olds would flock gleefully around a careening ball. Comfortably ensconced on lawn chairs, moms and dads would
I’m fond of my dentist, a close personal friend of many years, a skilled and ethical professional. But just as McCoy opined, “I’m a doctor, Jim, not a bricklayer,” there’s only so much even the most competent practitioner can accomplish. My friend is a dentist, not a magician. When the
It is my understanding that a 150-pound person burns about one hundred calories per mile. A runner’s body can store 2000 calories. Simple arithmetic suggests that there is nothing left at Mile 20, hence “the wall” that amateur marathoners frequently reference. Nutrition, training schedules, good shoes, stretching, and snacks high
In the mid 1950s, my grandparents bought a 700-square foot two-bedroom, one-bath, summer home in western North Carolina. They paid $5000. Their first visitor considered the shoddy construction, the 25-foot wide lot, the peeling paint, the obscure location hundreds of miles from Brooklyn and the rest of the known universe.
“Just say no way there is anything more important than my communicating my unequivocal, unconditional positive regard and connection to my child“ is, admittedly, less concise, but the 40-year old slogan may benefit from updating. Just shy of 70,000 drug related deaths last year is a familiar figure to my
One of our running buddies has a developmentally delayed daughter. Amanda is 17 years old and while she can shower, brush her teeth, and dress herself, there is little likelihood that she will ever read beyond a second grade level. Her cognitive impairments are evident after even a brief conversation
As anyone with a Ph.D. in physics can inform you, “dark matter is composed of particles that do not absorb, reflect, or emit light.” I mean, duh. What else would dark matter be? Admittedly, “dark matter is material that cannot be seen directly.” But there’s lots of stuff in that category. Neither
That we are a social species is not news. Indeed, the bunch of us who were plodding along together at Mile 11 the other day were beyond pleased to see a cadre of running buddies who had come out to cheer for us and 20,000 of our closest friends. It’s
Time spent sheltering-in-place due to the Corona virus pandemic has allowed me the opportunity to re-read a few hundred of these newsletters. While I stand by what I have written—“play Parcheesi with your kids; go camping with your kids; play Parcheesi with your kids while camping”—I noticed a certain strident
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