A few weeks ago I had a Zoom session with a medium, a woman recommended to me by a Norwegian friend. She had known nothing about me. She started by saying that my (dead) grandfather was “coming through”–and he was a minister? (Yes.) Then she said that my (dead) father was coming through, and there […]
You know how sometimes you have to do something but you don’t totally feel like doing it, so you don’t do it, and then you feel guilty about not doing it because it’s not, like, a hard thing to do, but then a few weeks go by and you’re like “I still haven’t done this […]
I was watching a one-act play performed by kids in the local high school (my daughter had a minor role as a monster-under-the-bed and a faceless dancing spirit), and one kid was playing a late-night radio DJ, and he was delivering a short monologue in which he made a wry reference to the “imminent apocalypse,” […]
My 16-year-old daughter was hosting a local trivia night (on Zoom, using Kahoot, if you must know), and one of the questions was about The Tempest, and while she waited for participants to answer, she said, “That’s a play with the line ‘Hell is empty, and all the devils are here,’ which is how I […]
The kids were reading a manga and laughing at a panel in which a character says, “My navel laser is both strong and cool!” This will now be my profile on dating apps.
Jem had to write an essay answering the question: What is the best form of government? Most of his classmates picked one and argued for its merits. Jem said something different: No form of government is good or bad. Its goodness or badness depends on the people within it. Please discuss.
The other adults in the family unit took the kids to a cabin up north over the recent school break. The cabin was decorated with seasonal and state-related geegaws and notions and faux-stamped signs–about bears and moose and lobsters and skiing and so on. Willa made a list of the signs; there were around 20. […]
My kids were recalling a sign they once saw at a birthday party, or perhaps a country fair. The sign was a list of events happening at the party/fair that day. At 1:30, the event was: “Muffin the Clown begins to roam.” Which they have never forgotten.
At dinner one night I was talking with my 10-year-old son, we must have been talking about myths, he’s been in a myth phase for a couple of years, Greek and Roman and Norse and Egyptian, and this must have led us to compare myths to contemporary religion, and then to science, and he said […]
I was talking with a friend who lives on a lovely plot of land way outside of town, her driveway is a dirt road at least a mile long, halfway into it you’re sure you’ve taken the wrong road, but the point is that she and her husband can wake up in the morning and […]