Tag: life
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Want to Read (∞): on becoming a good reader
I’ve officially become a Reader. Reading books is built into my life, to the point where if I haven’t read anything for a while (a while being a few days) I feel anxious. It didn’t used to be this way. Regularly reading for fun outside of schoolwork wasn’t a concept I grokked until the end…
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This is my alarm clock
This is my alarm clock. There are many like it, but this one is mine. As I was adjusting it last night for daylight saving time, it dawned on me that I’ve been using it for at least fifteen years. Most people probably use their smartphone alarm, but I don’t unless I’m away from home.…
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Rhythm Sand Booms
We stayed at a beach community in Michigan for the Fourth of July extended weekend and went to the chapel service they had on Sunday. One of the pastors began with a quote from Erma Bombeck: You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns,…
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The Family Stone
The Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus of The Family Stone says that “This family holiday dramedy features fine performances but awkward shifts of tone.” I mean, yeah. That’s why it’s so good. I didn’t come away loving it when I saw it in the theater. Too mercurial, I thought. And that excruciating dinner scene… But upon…
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Helen Huhta: A Life
“Take care and keep in touch.” My grandma Helen would close every letter she sent to me with that phrase. They were also the final words I said to her on Sunday, before she died yesterday at the age of 92. After slowly declining for years, she took a turn for the worse this weekend.…
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’16 Going On ’17
Here at the end of all things 2016, let’s look back on the resolutions I made last year at this time, shall we? Podcast less. I started the year with 21 podcasts in my feed, and currently have… 32. In my defense, I was much quicker to delete episodes this year, many of the podcasts publish infrequently,…
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The Strangers I Met
“When you talk to strangers,” writes Kio Stark, author of the TED Talk turned book When Strangers Meet: How People You Don’t Know Can Transform You, “you make beautiful and surprising interruptions in the expected narrative of your daily life. You shift perspective. You form momentary, meaningful connections. You find questions whose answers you thought…
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10 Years
Yesterday was my tenth anniversary of blogging. I started the second month into my freshman year of college, which also would have been right after I joined Facebook. Away from home and beginning to learn new and exciting things, I think like most writers I desired an outlet that felt at once private and public: somewhere I could express…
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Looking for a Mind at Housework
The other day I cleaned the bathroom, swept the porch, kitchen, and living room, washed and dried my clothes, and washed the dishes. There was plenty more I could have done. But I knew I’d be doing those chores again eventually, some sooner and some later, and would have to do others at some point as well. What…
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The Preservation of Tangibility
What started with a web search for Wendell Berry’s mailing address led me to this article by Sandra McCracken about her pilgrimage to visit the Sage of Port Royal—thus combining two of my favorite artists into one webpage. A passage from McCracken’s reflections stood out: One of my favorite moments was when Wendell said that he…
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Reconstitution
My wife and I did a deep-clean over a long holiday weekend. After having some friends over, we realized how much of our place needed attention. I’m sure our guests noticed nothing awry during their overnight stay. The guts were the issue—the stuff only we knew was there, that sat wedged in a closet or…
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One Less, Two More
I’m getting these new year’s resolutions in writing so that next year’s self-shaming will be based on documentation instead of vague recollections. Podcast less Currently I’m at about 21 podcasts in my iTunes feed, having just unsubscribed from three I realized I rarely listened to despite being interested generally in their subject matter. I started listening…
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Closing the Almanac
On the Fandom-Industrial Complex and Moving Forward from Back to the Future The day Back to the Future fans have waited for is finally here. The thirty-year countdown to October 21, 2015, one of the most well-known dates in movie history (despite how often it has been incorrectly reported on the interwebs), is over. There’s…
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Little Big City
Imagine my surprise when fellow high-school classmate and garage band musician Aaron Shekey was mentioned in John McPhee’s latest essay for The New Yorker. McPhee quoted Shekey’s own essay from a few years ago called “It’s What You Leave Out”, about the curious case of the Madison skyline. “One of the more interesting things about the…
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Wherein I Missed Third-Grade Field Day and Encountered Cosmic Futility
In third grade I was on a three-strike system at school. Three infractions and I’d miss a fun class event. I was an absent-minded kid, prone to forget things at home like homework or a slip needing a signature or an extra pair of shoes to wear at school during winter. (I remember at least…
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Postmortem No Aware
Only recently did a cruel reality suddenly appear before me: that after I die I’ll miss out on so many books and movies and albums. Leave alone everything that will be released after I die; I dare not ponder what greatness I’ll be missing, as it can’t be helped. There are just too many good…
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Burned
When you’re parched and dehydrated and take that first drink of cool water, you can feel it slide down your sandpapered throat like a tingling balm to soothe your thirst. That’s what it felt like to listen to Anathallo’s “All the First Pages” yesterday, a relatively bad day. Fate got fidgety, wanted to spice things up, so…