the beauty of an ordinary life
Looking back over the past 12 months, the way December beckons that kind of review, one encounter stands out as perhaps the best thing to happen to me in this terrible, wonderful year. I was having lunch with a philanthropist friend, trying (badly) to make a case for funding the nonprofit agency where I’ve worked…
Cheers, 2017; I’m watching you. And thanks to the folks at Hipstamatic for five years of happiness in picture-making.
My second favorite Eric Ries quote begins this way: “Zero invites imagination….” The context for the quote is the world of business, start-ups in particular. The idea, extrapolating a bit, is that imagination lives in a place without restraint, specific points of reference, judgment or relativism – all of those things being important, perhaps, at…
Water, light and food. If wall charts could talk, they’d tell you these are the things plants need to survive, to advance from seeds into leaf bearers. Wall charts work better, of course, with human interpreters: gardeners, farmers, teachers. It’s one thing to diagram photosynthesis but another to act out how plants grow cattywampus if…
My friend Emmet is retiring this year, 40 years after making the ‘mistake’ of taking a job teaching photography at Princeton, 27 years after coaching wandering, unfocused me through a wandering, unfocused thesis project. As I’ve written before, I received my first camera, an Olympus OM-10, when I was in high school, when part of…
This time last year, on a particularly stressful day, I challenged myself to a 30 minute free write. My task was to list, in no particular order, as many good things from 2013 as I could remember. Before I got to 10 I was feeling better and building momentum. By the end I was at…
We have to have a talk, me and you, right now. Yes, I broke a grammar rule. My mother, the writing teacher, said it was acceptable on occasion to break rules for dramatic effect, and I needed your attention. We have to have a sit-down, come to Jesus, fireside chat about who does and doesn’t…
The first time I tasted limoncello I realized I’d been wrong to think God made lemons so we might enjoy lemon curd. Tart, sweet, chilly on the tongue but warm in the throat, limoncello is the adult version of every happy lemonade stand you’ve ever visited, ever. It’s possible that the adventure associated with my…
