Blog/2015

Haiku (12.23.15)

Mayo Street ends in white. Black marker on mailbox: “J. Voge + others!”

The tiniest seed

In the spring, my son won a Good Citizen Award at school. It’s a monthly award that recognizes kids who have a good attitude, help other kids, and generally make the classroom a good place to be. This fall something has gone awry. He’s not digging school, not at all. This morning he gave this […]

Cake

In response to nothing I said, my son said to me, “When I hear the word ‘wife,’ I think of cake.” To which I had no response.

Translator’s note

I saw the English texts below in Tokyo. I report them not with mockery but with respect. Translation is hard. Magazine cover: Life necessities made by cats for people Title of TV show segment: Dangerous Evening Party  Sweatshirt: Arizona State University relaxing feelings Manga cover: Is the order a rabbit? Magazine cover: Outdoor dairy style […]

Big in Japan

Really: Was there some other title I was supposed to use? Notes from a trip that Tom, Jenn, and I took to Tokyo, for the American School in Japan: At certain major intersections in Tokyo there is a single crow that makes a sound like an adolescent boy trying very hard to sound like a […]

Ew.

My ten-year-old daughter and her slightly younger friend are now having conversations that at first appear to be taken from Beckett’s juvenalia. In the car on the way home from school, for example, my daughter described something gross, and her friend said:  “Ew.” And then she said: “I’m like: ‘Ew.’” And then again, with a […]

I am, in fact, so excited, I just can’t hide it

Four things I’m super-psyched about, you guys!  > The new album by the Chills, Silver Bullets. They’re a New Zealand band that’s been mostly silent for 20 years but that made one of my favorite albums of all time, Submarine Bells. I love artists who keep finding a way–or a reason–to make art.  > This […]

Seduced and Beheaded

I got my son a coloring book about dragons. It’s one of those Dover coloring books–dry, utilitarian, seemingly xeroxed from a clip-art manual. It included fulsome captions based on hoary legends from Ye Days of Dragons, which I did not review prior to purchase. He drew for about an hour, and then he asked what […]

The wooing season

Daughter came home from school today with a report from the frontier of pre-adolescence:  > She and her (girl) friends often act out stories that they make up. The stories “always start with two girls trying to get away from something they don’t like.”  > A boy named Halen (possibly as in Van Halen) has […]

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