We shouldn’t be shocked really. Because we all knew this was the way things were heading. It’s a digital world ruled by digital devices, so doesn’t it make sense that textbooks in school would be next? Yet, something in me was a little stunned when I read the article headlined, “Lawmakers approve move to digital textbooks.”
Happy Mother’s Day … Now here are your worms
I hope you thanked your mom on Mother’s Day. That fearless woman who brought you into the world. After carting you about in her womb. Who raised you and made sure your shoes were tied and your teeth brushed. Who made sure you grew up to be respectable and responsible and, if nothing else, somewhat civilized. You use a napkin, right? Because we all owe them that — a little thanks. Did you kiss your momma last Sunday? Actually, I didn’t. If I tried to kiss mine, she would swat me on the head. It’s not her thing.
Answering the call of the ice cream truck
There I sat, desperately trying to write a column — forcing myself to sit at the desk so I could work my way through some half-baked idea.
But tinkling through the air came a sound — music. A cacophony of bleeps and whistles, frenetic and super-charged.
A merry-go-round on speed.
Summer commeth … and the winter projects still aren’t finished
It happens every year. EVERY doggone year. You think we would be wise to it by now. But we’re not, and don’t realize the error of our ways until the cool spring air starts to fizzle and the inferno that is Florida begins its scorching march across the land.
Brother bonding under power lines and the roar of a chain saw
As the giant mulberry branch crashed to earth, nearly crushing me to death, all that ran through my mind was this: “Man, I sure do love these projects with my brother.” When I say “giant,” I mean the kind of branch that brushes the fuselage of airliners. They never seem so big when you’re standing there pondering the angle of the cut, how it will fall or why if there’s beer in the fridge you’re out here in the first place. But the minute it starts to go — the minute it starts coming for YOU! — the full scope, scale and size become crystal clear. RUN!
Skyping away those childhood dreams
There I was, sitting at the computer having a video conference across Skype with a guy in Nicaragua. He’s the designer on the college magazine I edit, a former college professor who picked up and moved to Central America because the surfing’s good and it gets him farther away from me. We Skype a lot. If you don’t know, Skype isn’t a kind of fish, but a program that lets two people video chat across the Internet. It’s almost as good as being in the same room, only I can’t reach across the desk, grab his shirt and scream, “Where are my pages?” (I miss that part.) So there we were, chatting it up like I’ve done dozens of times before when the grandest of revelations occurred to me: “Holy time machines, I’m in the future!”
Oh, For the Sake of ‘Tradition!’
“Tradition,” bellows Tevye like a summer thunderstorm in “Fiddler on the Roof.” “Tradition!” It’s been stuck in my head since I saw my sister Lauren’s high school production of it last month. She played Golde, and I must say she was quite good. Well, that is if you can get past this blonde teenage, very-American girl playing a Russian Jewish mother of five in turn-of-last-century peasant garb and heavy accent. Excuse me, but didn’t I just see you on a smart phone texting a friend? How peasant is that?!? Anyway, that song’s been bouncing around in my head ever since, which is maybe why Tevye called me the other day, his voice disguised as my mother’s.
Pondering the loss of brain cells thanks to the Internet
The Internet is making me dumb. I be dumb thanks to the Internet. Damn, you, Internet, damn you! Not it fault, I know. We’re to blame really. The Internet is just a … well … what the heck is it? Microchips and wires? Bits and bytes? A fancy box with endless photos of dogs dressed like Darth Vader and generic Viagra ads? Truth is, the Internet is a vast catalog of searchable information, 98 percent of which will turn your brain softer than the carved pumpkin dissolving into a puddle of goop on my front porch.
Phone Calls from Mom and Raking Pine Needles
A student came racing into my opinion writing class out of breath, painfully late and apologizing profusely. He’s always late, but never apologizes like this. “This time I actually have a good excuse,” he told me, doubled-over and wheezing. (Most of the time it’s cigarettes or needing to feed his cat.) “My mother was yelling at me because I didn’t call home this week.” That WAS a good one — one of the best I had heard in an awful long time. Gotta’ call your mom, I told him. I didn’t have the heart to tell this poor college kid those phone calls never stop — and that they only get weirder as he gets older.
Every Moment Now Precious for a Dog with Cancer
This was supposed to be a very different column. One about how dogs mean so much to us. How those four-legged critters — with their dirty feet and ability to eat three-week-old shrimp shells, only to cough them up on the rug — can woo us over and become irreplaceable parts of our lives. And I guess it’s still about that. But it was supposed to be about my brother’s dog, Oreo — a member of his band of rabble-rousing K-9s that I call the “country cousins.” She was an old girl — 17, for goodness sake — and had been part of our family for so long that the loss was felt by all when her body gave out and she had to be put to sleep. Oreo was a big, dopey bear — you half expected to see her lugging around a honey pot and breaking into song. She had a permanent grin stretched across her face … like the one a child gets after walking into Disney World for the first time. It screamed, “WOWWWWW!” and Oreo would have that grin staring at a moth. She enjoyed life, even just sitting on the porch doing nothing, and there’s a lot to be said for that.