Chad Comello

Tag: life

  • Grandma’s dressers

    It’s been a year since my Grandma Helen died. I inherited several things from her before and after her death, including a Selectric typewriter and typewriter desk. But of these heirlooms, what I now notice most frequently, and what most often remind me of her, are the dressers.

    One horizontal and one vertical, they are massive and sturdy things made of solid wood. We had to rent a U-Haul to get them home. They are properly worn in (but not worn down) by decades of previous use. My grandparents were frugal, but when they made big purchases they were of high quality.

    Though I usually notice the distinct burnt orange color first, it’s the smell that triggers the memories. The dressers lived with her for so long that inevitably the aroma I associate with her—a melange of perfumes, deodorants, and who knows what other products that made up her graceful cosmetic presentation—seeped deeply into the wood and now wafts its way to me at random times throughout the day.

    Then I think of the time we spent in her apartment baking and talking and laughing at eating grapes together in the final years of her life, and I smile.

  • Which movie changed you?

    On Being—a top-5 podcast for me—has a new offshoot podcast called This Movie Changed Me, with “one fan talking about the transformative power of one movie.” So far they’ve featured Star Wars: A New Hope, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and You’ve Got Mail.

    It made me think about what mine would be. The quick and easy answer would be Back to the Future, if only because of how much I’ve written about it on this site. But I think there are other candidates. Some that come to mind, all for different reasons, include It’s a Wonderful Life, High Fidelity, Once, Toy Story, and Unbreakable.

    I don’t know. I have to think about this. What’s yours?

    Update: I want to include some of the replies I’ve gotten to this query:

    • “Oddly enough, Snowpiercer. While it’s a terribly chaotic movie, man, it haunts me every day. The ignorant frivolity of the front car compared to the ruthless survival of the back cars…way too real. I probably think about it every day. Because I’m one of the front car a**holes.”
    • “It’s A Wonderful Life. Each Christmas Eve we watch it I learn something from the movie that is applied to my life; courage through hardship, wisdom of God, love of family and friends, mystery of life. It’s amazing how this movie has been intertwined with me on a small yet profound level.”
    • “Cloud Atlas. I frankly had a spiritual experience in the theater. It articulated my worldview in a way I hadn’t really seen before (or at least to that extent). Uneven as it may be, it floored me.”
    • “While I look at it quite differently now, Chasing Amy had a huge impact on me. Her monologue about sexual freedom and independence is feminist AF and it was like finally having my thoughts and feelings validated.”
    • “Do the Right Thing made me aware of how I process anger as a white person.”

  • ‘Remember what’s important’ and other principles of the modern hunter-gatherer

    Humans are not hunter-gatherers anymore, but we were for a long time. Nicholas Bate has a list of 50 skills we collectively gained from that era can go to waste in our modern existence, unless we realize how useful they still are. I like the list because it combines small practicalities with big-picture stuff. For example:

    Tell stories that fire the imagination.

    Use eyes for distances beyond the screen: look long, look up.

    Remember what’s important.

    Stare at night skies unpolluted by light.

    Establish rituals: writing, building & crafting, reflecting

    No elevators. No escalators. No PPT. No Facebook after the sun sets.

    Be self-reliant: learn how it works, from pensions to mowers.

    Believe in magic.

    Scan the horizon.

    Evolve, change and learn from the masters.

    Never let the fire go out.

  • How to have better conversations

    Via Kottke, here are radio interviewer Celeste Headlee’s 10 tips for better conversations:

    1. Don’t multitask.
    2. Don’t pontificate.
    3. Use open-ended questions.
    4. Go with the flow.
    5. If you don’t know, say that you don’t know.
    6. Don’t equate your experience with theirs.
    7. Try not to repeat yourself.
    8. Stay out of the weeds.
    9. Listen.
    10. Be brief.

    I’m better at some of these than others. I think about #6 a lot because it’s so easy to do, and I think about #5 a lot because, for me at least, it’s so hard to do.

    Additionally, WSJ’s “Save Yourself From Tedious Small Talk” offers some conversation-openers that spark pleasure and deeper thinking beyond today’s weather and the traffic you hit on your way here:

    • Have you been working on anything exciting recently?
    • What was the highlight of your day?
    • Any exciting plans this summer?
    • What do you do to relax?
    • What’s keeping you awake at night?

  • 2017 in review

    NYE2017-windows

    See other year in review posts.

    This is the view from my New Year’s Eve. Since I can count the number of degrees it is outside on one hand, I decided to stay in this morning to look back at my 2017 calendar and remember the notable events, trips, and people that made up my year. In chronological order:

    • The Packers beating the Giants and the Cowboys in the playoffs.
    • Going down to Florida for my cousin’s funeral was the definition of bittersweet: horrible reason for being there, but good opportunity to see family we don’t see very often.
    • Sold two typewriters for more than I bought them for. It’s a seller’s market out there.
    • Went to Ann Arbor, MI, for the first time for a baby shower and hung out with far flung friends.
    • Starting a two-person book club with my friend Josh, where we get together to eat and discuss the book, along with politics, religion, and everything under the sun. I call them our “save the world” sessions because we sort through the miasma of current events and decide on the proper way to fix them. If only D.C. would listen in!
    • Bar trivia with Jenny and her cousins. Weren’t close to winning, but reminded me I should do bar trivia more.
    • Had neighbors over for dinner, which reminded me we should have neighbors over for dinner more.
    • Saw my grandma the day before she died. Though by that time she was unresponsive, the timing was fortuitous.
    • Long weekend trip to the Twin Cities to visit friends. Hung out with their awesome kids and gallivanted around town.
    • Hosted a marriage proposal in our apartment by people who used to live in it.
    • Saw Sandra McCracken at The Union with Jenny, three of my favorite things.
    • Got quoted in Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option, then hosted a discussion about the book at a local potluck.
    • Went to Durham, NC, for a wedding and loved it.
    • Continued playing ultimate frisbee Sunday afternoons when I was able, and loving the feeling of a perfectly thrown touchdown.
    • Got to facilitate two dozen very cute interviews between 3rd graders for a local history project at my library.
    • Saw the Cubs lose to the Brewers at Wrigley Field on a cold and rainy day. Highlights within that include seeing two of Jenny’s cousins there, and Nick Offerman walking directly past us after singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”.
    • Went to my first local ward meeting, in a post-election effort to become more civically engaged.
    • Had a quick and haphazard solo recording session of some of my songs. Won’t be able to use most of it, but it reminded me of the agony and ecstasy of recording.
    • Took several quick trips to Jenny’s family cottage in Michigan, including over Independence Day weekend.
    • Celebrated two years of marriage to my bride, who supports my weird hobbies and makes me want to be a better person.
    • Went to ALA 2017 in Chicago. Seeing the Librarian of Congress was a highlight.
    • Called or hung out with several friends, new and old, to catch up and get to know each other, all of which I appreciate.
    • Drove to Toronto for a family wedding. The 8-hour drive wasn’t so great, but being there for the first time was.
    • Convened with family in Cape May, NJ, for a reunion of sorts, then caravanned to Elkins, WV, for grandma’s memorial service. Saw lots of extended family for the first time and got to hang with my cousins’ kids, who grow too fast.
    • Played golf for the first time in at least 15 years in Elkins the morning of the memorial. Grateful for my cousin’s husband’s caddying and encouragement the whole rushed 9. Sank one sweet putt and had one great approach shot, otherwise: A for effort.
    • My sister visited to see Billy Joel at Wrigley Field. We were planning to just listen from outside the ballpark as I did years ago with a friend for Paul McCartney, but on a whim we checked the box office for tickets and decided to jump on them as an early birthday present to me. Awesome show.
    • Saw The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, California Typewriter, and Columbus at the Music Box Theater.
    • Hosted several friends and family overnight on our pullout couch-bed, having each of them leave a note in our guest book.
    • Went to college homecoming for the first time since graduating, and got an alumni discount on a t-shirt as a reward.
    • Got an advance copy of Tom Hanks’ typewriter book, which I reviewed, then photographed with one of my typers, which got on the news. Then got a letter from the man himself.
    • Met up with friends in Asheville, NC, which was gorgeous and fun.
    • Wrote a post a day for #Novemblog2017 instead of trying and failing to write a novel I wouldn’t enjoy doing anyway. Some favorites: This is my alarm clock, Want to Read (∞): on becoming a good reader, Google Past, and In praise of wedding reception air drumming.
    • Got invited to a Friendsgiving and tried to build a gingerbread house with a kid who was super stoked about it.
    • Welcomed long-awaited nephew Olin Charles into the world, and began taking pictures of him immediately.
    • Got some books, a Merriam-Webster t-shirt, a banjo capo, and other fun little things for Christmas.
    • Encountered lots of great books, movies, and music, and wrote more entries in Cool Civil War Names and Refer Madness.

    2017: Not Bad!

  • What’s your number?

    Not sure when I learned about the Enneagram, but almost immediately after I did I knew I was a Five. However flawed and subjective it is, I’ve found it to be a good model for understanding human nature as an individual and in relationship with others. Plus it’s easier to remember than the Myers-Briggs.

    Discovering the Enneagram podcast Typology reignited my interest in it. (I’ve liked the episodes with Rob Bell, Shauna & Aaron Niequist, and the panel of Fives especially.)

    It was through the podcast I learned Ryan O’Neal of the band Sleeping At Last is writing a song about every Enneagram number, as part of his ambitious Atlas project. He’s done One and Two thus far, and they are exceptionally beautiful.

  • In praise of wedding reception air drumming

    I didn’t realize I had a reputation. At a wedding recently, the bride and groom told me one of the things they were looking forward to the most was my air drumming. They had seen it in action at a previous wedding and had enjoyed it so much that they decided they would make time at their own wedding reception to watch me perform and even participate themselves.

    Humbled though I was, I didn’t set out to be a beloved wedding reception air drummer. Out on those shiny faux wooden dance floors, air music is all I can do. Because I can’t really dance—aside from the slow-dance swaying that hasn’t improved much since middle school—my strategy for participating in reception dancing is to pretend to play the music well enough to appear united with the exuberant, sweaty throng of guests who are actually dancing.

    This doesn’t happen at every reception. The right combination of people I know, complete strangers, and alcohol have to be in place for this very particular set of skills to be unleashed.

    Without:

    • people I know, I wouldn’t have the comfort of a supportive home base in which to air-boogie;
    • complete strangers I know I’ll never see again, I wouldn’t be OK with making a fool of myself;
    • and alcohol and the liquid courage it provides, I wouldn’t be dancing in front of strangers and people I know at all.

    Until I learn one day how to go beyond the simple side-to-side two-stepping many tall, lanky, self-conscious white dudes like myself resort to under dance duress, air drumming will have to do.

    And you know what? I enjoy it. I’m good at it. Though I tend to stick to drumming because I was a drummer before anything else, my air talents aren’t limited to the percussive arts. I’ll thrown down a mean air rhythm guitar, string, horn, or bass line too, and make it look good. Any palooka can flail around pretending to play “Don’t Stop Believin’”; it takes a true air instrument craftsman to accurately mime the crunchy guitars in “Party in the USA” or the synth solo in “Shut Up and Dance”.

    There are at least two weddings on the docket for me next summer, so I have a few months to get back into air shape. Once I am, you’ll find me out there again, planted in my air power stance—knees bent, left foot forward, leaning back slightly, and doing my part to keep the party going.

  • Life, light, and typing at the bliss station

    This is the view of my typing station. It is currently manned by my Smith-Corona Electra, flanked by Life from a succulent and Light from an owl lamp, buttressed by a Jackalope typewriter pad I highly recommend, and supported by a typing desk I inherited from my typist grandmother, and it is quickly becoming my bliss station.

  • It’s fall: what music are you listening to?

    Here’s an incomplete, totally subjective playlist of music that reminds me of fall. Let me know in the comments what music reminds you of autumn.

    “October” by Eric Whitacre. Played the orchestral version of this in high school, but the choral version is just as good and beautifully evocative of the season.

    “Oh Shenandoah” folk song. Sang the choral version in high school, though really any version of it is bound to be good.

    Keep It Together by Guster. Not really sure why as I don’t like any other Guster music, but this is the first of three indie-pop-rock albums I discovered in college that have clung to my consciousness in a specific seasonal way.

    You Are My Sunshine by Copeland. Have a distinct memory of listening to this while walking through downtown Chicago at night in late November on my way back to my suburban college campus. “On the Safest Ledge” still gives me goosebumps. Eat, Sleep, Repeat is also a great autumnal album.

    Everything In Transit by Jack’s Mannequin. Like Guster, I don’t listen to any of their other music, and again mostly the first half of the album resonates for some reason. Usually play this only once a year on a brisk overcast late November day, all the better if I’m in an emo mood.

    “Adagio-Andante con moto” by George Gershwin. My friend Tim and I made a lot of live action and stop-motion movies together in middle school and high school. One (that was ultimately aborted) was a sort of impressionistic music video of our hometown, which at the time (and after) ranked among the Best Places to Live in America. We went to extreme lengths to try to align the footage with the music, including Tim sprinting through his house to turn out lights in time with the end notes of the song.

    Meet Joe Black soundtrack by Thomas Newman. Tim had this on CD. We’d listen to it all the time and use it in our movies. I still have never seen Meet Joe Black and I’d like to keep it that way. (Runner-up Thomas Newman soundtrack: Little Women.)

    Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. Though appropriate for listening any time, this was another album (along with the Lord of the Rings soundtracks) Tim and I kept in heavy rotation when hanging out. Have you figured out yet that we weren’t cool in high school?

  • Want to Read (∞): on becoming a good reader

    goodreads.png

    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 of college, which is also when I started keeping track of my reading. In my post-undergrad phase from 2010 to 2012 I read 16 to 18 books per year. In 2013, when I finished grad school, had a long reading-friendly train commute to a summer internship, and weathered a few months of unemployment, I shot up to 49 books. The number continued to rise once I started working in libraries in 2014: 66 that year, 53 in 2015, and my peak of 80 in 2016. I’ll be close to that again this year.

    But I’ll be OK with not one-upping myself, because recently I realized I am trying to one-up myself. Totally separate from the psychic nourishment reading provides me is the equally powerful desire to collect more and more books on my Read shelf, almost for its own sake. Accumulating information and knowledge and units (books in this case) is a key part of my personality—Input, Context, and Learner are three of my top five StrengthsFinder characteristics—so this makes sense. But it can also become counterproductive if collecting-for-collecting’s-sake crowds out the deeper benefits of reading, which are many.

    What good is reading a lot if I don’t remember a lot of what I read? I’m one of those nerds who takes notes of quotes and interesting factoids as I read, usually in nonfiction books. But there are several books I’ve read, even within the last year, that I remember very little of, if at all, except a general sense of whether I liked it or not. I can’t imagine what it’s like for people who read 100+ books a year: do they have amazing memories? are they skimming a lot of them? do they do anything else?

    I suppose it’s the nature of memory when you’re not a savant to filter out certain memories and solidify others. To say it was a waste of time reading those forgotten books wouldn’t be true because I enjoyed them in the moment, and perhaps they filtered down into my subconscious in a way I don’t understand.

    But still, I’ve resolved to slow down a little bit, to not feel the need to rush through every book, and to allow time between books to let them settle and to let myself do other things with my time except read.

    I know I’m gonna die one day and there’s just not enough time to read everything and that kinda pisses me off. But I’m willing to fail to hit whatever my ideal number of books is, as the benefits of such an arbitrary, artificial, and unsustainable quest will be far fewer than the benefits of quality reading.

  • This is my alarm clock

    2017-11-04 20.28.10

    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. I don’t even keep it in my room.

    This alarm clock is one of many objects I’ve had for a long time and have kept using despite the availability of more modern options. There’s also my orange jacket, acquired at a Salvation Army in Missouri about fifteen years ago as well, which if you’ve seen me in the fall or winter you have most likely seen.

    These objects started as mere tools, but they are good and simple enough to go on dependably doing their jobs, so they gradually became the architecture of my life. They are nearly invisible to me, assumed and expected, until a dead battery or a frayed stitch alert me anew to their existence and need for care.

    Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up asks us to thank our stuff before we dispose of it. I don’t want to wait until my alarm clock dies or my jacket disintegrates or gets lost to appreciate their small but abiding roles in what is now half of my life.

    So thanks, jacket. Thanks, alarm clock. There are many like you, but you two are mine.

  • Rhythm Sand Booms

    giphy

    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, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.

    I get nervous in churches around the Fourth of July. Celebrating a secular holiday within a religious environment can lead to grotesque displays of nationalistic idolatry, or it can produce something more appropriate for a church that celebrates its country while respecting the benefits of separating church and state. Luckily this was the latter. We sang hymns, heard a good message, and that was that.

    What was more powerful to me happened the next evening, when the whole community gathered on the beach to watch a fireworks display, as they do every year. We brought beach chairs and set up facing southward along the beach, where the fireworks would be. Slowly more people congregated and added to the festival-like atmosphere. Families took pictures against the amber sunset, teens tossed a frisbee, kids twirled sparklers, and I read The Iliad until it got too dark to read.

    Then we all sat and waited for the twilight to fade to black enough to allow the fireworks to be that much vibranter. When they began, I remembered once again what it was like to share something with a group of people that wasn’t on a screen. I didn’t notice many if any devices out. The rows of heads I saw when I looked behind me were only tilted upward, not downward as they would be with a smartphone in hand.

    Many of these families had been partaking in this tradition for decades. I only recently married into it, yet it still impressed upon me the power of ritual, and how, when combined with the spirit of a place, it can foster an acute state of grace. I was grateful for Lake Michigan. I was grateful for the opportunity to look at the stars and contemplate my place in the universe and my nation while watching the fireworks burst before me. I was grateful to lie back with my fellow Americans and enjoy a celebration that didn’t involve guns, tanks, and soldiers.

    The scene, like the fireworks themselves, dissipated as quickly as it materialized. We folded chairs, shook off sand, filed off the beach en masse, and trundled to our beds to begin another American year.

    Image: the view from the beach at sunset.

  • The Family Stone

    The-Family-Stone-Man-Repeller-Feature-copy.jpg

    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 further viewings, I’ve come to realize it’s one of the great Christmas movies—my #2 overall—precisely because of its mood swings.

    (What is “awkward shifts of tone” if not a definition of family?)

    Not only does the film capture a particular kind of cozy, Hallmark-approved Christmastime—and one that’s distinctly New England—but it also vividly illustrates what it’s like to go through any kind of Christmas with the people you love but who are also most adept at driving you crazy.

    “Your tie’s crooked”

    From the beginning an immediate familiarity sets in as we’re dropped into this year’s Stone family Christmas, which feels like it could be any of the many Christmases they have shared together.

    The family members gradually arrive at the Stone home and start chatting as if continuing an ongoing conversation. There’s hardly any backstory, no “remember last year when…” or other expository filler that can weigh down family dramas. As we meet each Stone, we can deduce at once their role in the family, though not yet what role they will play in the unfolding story.

    Once they settle in, the home-for-the-holidays moments start slowly but steadily piling up. Like the random assemblage of characters going to get pizzas, a reminder to me of how driving to places around the holidays with people you don’t usually drive with feels a bit more special. Or Amy and Sybil pestering Everett about taking his tie off, which shows us that was something Amy and Sybil cared enough about and that Everett was the kind of person to wear a tie at a family get-together.

    “I need you to do me a favor and try not to be so perfect”

    Everyone starts out on a certain trajectory, but writer/director Thomas Bezucha does a great job of steering the key characters into unexpected directions, which are just as varied as the film’s tone.

    Sybil’s terminal breast cancer is alluded to but never exploited, and is the impetus for the brief but powerful moments of reconciliation she experiences with her adult children before the end of the movie. Amy’s prickliness, which bleeds into outright hostility at times, gives way to brief moments of vulnerability.

    And though the partner swap revealed in the one-year-later epilogue is borderline preposterous (Meredith’s totally cool with her sister dating her former fiancé? Really?), the circumstances that led to each character’s moment of clarity were sold well.

    “Isn’t there anybody that loves me?”

    I’ve made peace with my positive opinion of The Family Stone being in the minority. I know there are others out there who see what I see in it, but I also understand it’s not for everyone.

    But, to paraphrase Sybil’s speech to Everett, I’d hate to see you miss out on it because you have this picture in your mind of the perfect Christmas movie. There’s no such thing, just like there’s no such thing as a perfect family or relationship or ring size or breakfast strata.

    Embrace the mess. Let your festive freak flag fly. And say it with me: “I don’t care whether you like it or not!”

  • 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. Jenny and I had already made plans to visit Madison for other reasons, but suddenly there was only one. Hospice was called, other family flew in. She was breathing but unresponsive, opening her eyes only rarely and smiling at whoever was there—that’s Helen for you—but then quickly fading again. We kept watch over her and made sure she was comfortable as we reminisced and discussed what to do with all of her things when the time came. She had moved thrice since leaving Texas after her husband of 63 years died, each time winnowing more and more things.

    It was in her first Madison apartment where I began recording my conversations with her. These interviews, which I transcribed along with interviews of her family and friends, became a family oral history of her life. I compiled it into a book and gave her a printed copy for Christmas 2013. She never stopped thanking me for it. She also kept telling people that I wrote it, but I couldn’t get her to realize that I didn’t write it at all. It was her life—and such a life—as told by the people she loved and who loved her.

    “Take care and keep in touch.” I could barely speak the words to her as I held her hand for the final time. She meant those words, because she lived them. She made a long life out of caring for people and staying in touch: birthday cards, phone calls about the latest family happenings, letters of encouragement and descriptions of the weather (always the weather).

    Jenny and I made dobbins last night in honor of her. If you’ve ever had a Dobbin (or mound bars as she called them), you know Helen. They are her recipe and trademark within the family. Like her, they are sweet but powerful, and you can’t get enough of them. They are also the theme of one of the last emails she sent to me:

    I love you too.

  • ’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, and some of them I’m on a trial run with. I also have been listening to more audiobooks. But the spirit of the goal was to have more time when I’m not listening to anything. So this one’s a work in progress, and probably a goal for 2017.

    Reflect more. Though I have the free time to continue to plow through books and movies, I think I’ve done a better job writing about the ones that spark thoughts in me and allowing myself to not read or watch something.

    Write more. My goal was to write 52 posts for the year, one for each week. Though I didn’t have at least one a week, I ended 2016 with 67 posts. I probably could have done more, but as this is a strictly At Whim enterprise, I’m not too concerned about quotas.

    Overall I think I actually did pretty good! Keeping the goals simple, attainable, and somewhat measurable certainly helped.

    2017 Goals

    Complete a woodworking project. This is something I’ve been pondering for a while. I’ve yet to find the plans for something I want to make, but this is a big one for this year: to put my hands to use on a tangible and practical project. We need a new bookshelf, so I was thinking about that. Any suggestions?

    Run a race. Like woodworking, running in an official race is something I’ve thought would be a nice thing to do but have never pulled the trigger. But I’ve come to realize if I ever plan on completing things, I need concrete deadlines to make them happen. A specific race of a specific length will help me in this, I hope.

    Improve my Spanish. I’ve had a decent grasp of it at various points in my life—in high school when I was in classes, during a summer stay in Guatemala, during a post-college stay in Colombia—but I’ve never gotten close to fluent. Short of an immersion program or living in a Latin American country, don’t know if I’ll ever be, but I’d like to get closer. And since it’ll only get harder as I get older, there’s no day but today.

  • 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 you knew. You reject the ideas that make us so suspicious of each other.”

    We’re especially susceptible to these interactions when traveling, when we’re out of our comfort zone and into the unknown of a new place. That was the case for me last week, when I was visiting a previously unknown place for a few days with my wife. Though I hadn’t yet read When Strangers Meet, I knew it was on hold for me at the library for when I got back, so just the idea of talking to strangers pervaded my time there:

    1. Two of my Uber drivers were very laconic, but two weren’t. We asked Latanya about the craziest rides she’s done: she said she once delivered fried Oreos to someone 12 miles away, which got us talking about the insanity of fried Oreos. And as Edward drove us to the train station, I noticed he had a “Morehouse Alum ’69” badge hanging from his rearview mirror. I said I knew Dr. King went there and asked him what it was like.

    2. It was an unusually cold morning for this southern town, and as I walked down the street a twenty-something dude walking with his friends ducked into a building entrance for just a moment to get out of the biting wind. He reemerged apace with me, huddled and ill-clothed for the temperature, and said “Damn it’s cold.” I said I was from Chicago and was used to it. He showed me the rabbit’s foot he kept on his belt and was stroking just to keep his hands warm. “What you up to?” he asked. Just walking, I said, and asked what he did for a living. He paused and said with a chuckle he makes beats. Anything online? I asked. He said no, then asked if I had a phone number. I laughed uncomfortably. Email? “Yeah,” I said with another chuckle. “Why?” He didn’t say anything, but was still smiling goofily. I told him I was off to find a Dunkin’ Donuts and we parted ways.

    3. I stopped in the main library branch to look around, as is tradition when in a new place. I approached the reference desk and asked the librarians for recommendations of places to see and food to eat. With that oft-reported southern hospitality, they rattled off several sights and restaurants that we ended up going to.

    4. Our flight home was overbooked. We weren’t in a rush to get back home, so we took the airline’s offer of generous flight credit, a free hotel stay, and another flight in the morning. We walked out to the hotel shuttle station where dozens of people were shivering in the surprising night cold and waiting for their shuttle. A woman next to us asked if our flight had been canceled. We told her about the deal and she said she and her boyfriend had done the same thing. She asked what we’d been doing there. Business and pleasure. They were really friendly and were going to the same hotel, but once we got onto the crowded shuttle we didn’t talk again.

  • 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 ideas into the anonymous void of the internet, but also allowed for others to respond.

    I’ve used a few blogging services over the years: first it was Blogspot, then WordPress, then temporary stints at Squarespace and Tumblr before becoming self-hosted with my own domain name. As I learned HTML and CSS I created a few simple designs along the way, but the constant fiddling got tiresome, so I just start using pre-made templates.

    In honor of my ten years blogging, I went through my entire archive and picked out two posts from each year I thought were representative of my interests or writing style at the time. It was fun to see trends emerge and decline over the years: lots of Oscar-related umbrage early on, current events commentary in the middle period, and many more book and movie reviews in the last few years. I suppose that’s the fun/terror of keeping a blog or diary: it’s a living archive of where you’ve been, how you’ve changed, and what you’ve thought about at any given time. And it can’t lie.

    These aren’t necessarily my best posts — just some choice memories, meditations, and meaningful mutterings from a decade of writing on the ‘net.

    (I decided to exclude the posts that were originally published in my college newspaper; you can see those here.)

    2006

    you’re coming alive to me — Just some freshman year philosophizing.

    The Prestige — The first of many reviews I put online.

    2007

    Soundtrack of the moment, part II — One of three “soundtrack of the moment” posts that provide a great snapshot of the music I was into and getting into at that time.

    he’s very good — On my encounter with Henry Winkler.

    2008

    Kristen Wiig = Hilarious — An appreciation of an exceptional SNL cast member.

    Introverts: A Misunderstood Bunch — Still the blog’s most-read post.

    2009

    Breaking News: Jesus Christ Registers As A Republican — My attempt at Onion-style satire. Definitely not as funny as The Onion.

    The Ten Commandments Of Watching LOST In A Group — This was a thing at the time.

    2010

    Sarah Palin is Not a Serious Person — She was a thing at the time.

    On the River — A short essay on a kayak trip. If you detect a hint of Hemingway, it’s because I was reading a lot of him at the time, as overly introspective young men are wont to do.

    2011

    7 Beautiful Movie Music Moments — Man, they all still get me.

    Love And Illusion In Midnight In Paris And Me And Orson Welles — I’ve done a few comparative analyses of two films, but this one’s my favorite.

    2012

    Bringing Old Orthodoxies to a Boil — A review of Fergus Bordewich’s Bound for Canaan and its modern implications.

    Best For The Best: Nights of The Animal Years — Why I love one of my favorite albums.

    2013

    Rutherford B. Hazy — In my ongoing quest to reading a biography of every U.S. president, Hayes has been my biggest surprise.

    Silence is Beholden — Walking on silence in Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

    2014

    Encountering Robin — On meeting Robin Williams and the burden of celebrity.

    This Is Martin Bonner — A meditation masquerading as a movie review.

    2015

    Wherein I Missed Third-Grade Field Day and Encountered Cosmic Futility — Exorcising some old demons as I walked through my grade school for the first time since leaving it.

    No Quarter — I pillaged my U.S. state quarters collection for laundry fare, which my grandma would have found amusing.

    2016

    The Shepherd’s Life — Some reflections on one of my favorite books of 2015.

    How to Win My Vote — Still relevant on the eve of this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad election.

  • Mugs Shot

    2016-08-13 11.50.29

    We didn’t get to choose which ones survived.

    Ten mugs hang safely on the mug tree that sits next to our coffee maker on the small Ikea table by the kitchen window. Every few weeks I rotate which mugs get to be on the tree for coffee duty. I didn’t know when I put those eight there that they would end up survivors, the silent witnesses of their brethren sitting dutifully in the middle cupboard before on a Friday afternoon tumbling out of the cupboard after the plastic pegs holding up their shelf gave way.

    Had I known, I would have been much more selective, would have made the impossible decisions about which darlings to save and which to let die. The process would have been anguishing—more than it ought to be, realistically, but we are Mug People, so we are not realistic about our mugs.

    But I didn’t know. Mugs that were filled with meaning—inside jokes, souvenirs from faraway places and unforgettable experiences—that were for some unknown reason not the Chosen Ones cascaded to early deaths in a flash, and there was nothing we could do about it. It didn’t happen like Jenga, after placing one too many atop each other and seeing the tenuous heap collapse before my eyes. Then I would have, might have, been able to avert an avalanche and save a few more mugs from shattering on the floor. But it happened during the day, while we were at work and none the wiser.

    I got the pictures from my wife: shards of ceramic and glass littering the counter and kitchen floor. I could make out some of the designs and logos and familiar features of our reliable morning friends in the larger fragments that stood out amidst the particulates. Didn’t matter. They were dead and gone, and the remainders were accidents.

    We don’t get to choose. We can just say goodbye after it’s too late.

    The world doesn’t need more thinkpieces about Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, but I’ll just say her advice about thanking the things you give away for the meaning they provided in their time of service… it’s good advice. Especially for Mug People who lost most of their mugs against their will.

    Stuff is stuff is stuff, except when it isn’t.