FATHER AND DAUGHTER DURING NAP TIME Summer of 2007 As a teacher, I have my summers off. To be more specific, my last day of work was June 15th and my next day will be August 15th (not including one college class I taught Tuesdays and Thursday evenings for six weeks). I will have had eight and a half weeks off. What a gift! What a blessing for my family! This summer I have been incredibly blessed to have had plenty of time to spend lazy afternoons with my baby daughter, Julia. This – and only this – has allowed me to get to know her moods, her body language,…
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The Stages of One’s Life
“THE GOOD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GREAT!” “There was nothing I was not up for teaching…boundless energy and ambition!” THE PRODUCTIVE DECADE OF ONE’S THIRTIES I used to tell myself I was one of those relatively few people who loved their jobs. For me teaching was more vocation than job, and the boundary between what I did at work for pay and did at home for pleasure was very blurred, if it even existed at all. I spent my free summers as a teacher working on American history curriculum and developing what I hoped would be innovative, exciting, and challenging assignments for my students. I read books for pleasure…
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Family Bliss
“Both parents then showered crying baby Julia with kisses and loving words…” A Morning to Remember Forever Today baby Julia had her usual morning feeding at 9:00 a.m. She fed for some thirty minutes and then played and cooed for another hour or so, watching the world around her and reaching out for her toys. Eventually Julia grew tired, then overtired, and started to fuss and cry, as she found it hard to settle down, self-soothe, and to get the sleep her mind and body craved. (This is of the many, many skills Julia is working on at four months of age!) This is Julia’s routine, more or less, repeated…
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Our President and His Polyps
“The president is in good health,” Bush spokesman Tony Snow said Monday, July 23, 2007. “There is no reason for alarm.” WHY? Last Saturday I read that President Bush underwent anesthesia for a routine colonoscopy, whereupon Vice President Cheney officially was in charge of the Executive Branch for a few hours. I was also informed that during the operation doctors found and removed five growths – known as “polyps” – from Bush’s colon. Doctors would later examine the polyps for signs of cancer, although it appeared that none was present. President Bush would be scheduled to have another routine colonoscopy in three years. This, believe it or not, was the…
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An Afternoon at the Zoo
Wife and daughter at the entrance to the Santa Barbara Zoo AN UNEXPECTED PLEASURE Today I did something I haven’t done in some 25 years: I went to the zoo. I went with wife Maria and daughter Julia to the Santa Barbara Zoo, to be exact. And I had a great time, much to my surprise. Young adults – those in their twenties and early thirties – don’t have much occasion to go the zoo, and so it was with me. I search back through the mists of time and seem to remember my last such visit was to the San Diego Zoo in the early 1980s. I was 13…
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Before I Die…
10 THINGS TO DO BEFORE I DIE My step-sister Kimberely asked me to identify twenty things I wanted to do before I died. I decided to think up ten but could not get past eight. I did, however, come up with a lot that I had already done or did not wish to do. Here is the list: Read all the major Jane Austen novels, as well as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Little Women with my daughter when she is a pre-teen. I have always had difficulty with these tomes of feminine literature, but to plow through them with my daughter could be a shared joy. I look forward…
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The New iPhone: Worth the Hype?
Steve Jobs wants you to buy his new iPhone! The new Apple iPhone went on sale this morning, and customers camped out to be the first in line to buy one. I do not understand this. Someone please help me to understand. Why is this such a big deal? I cannot see it. As I can discern it, the iPhone is a combination iPod, cell phone, with moderate email and Web browsing capacity. For about $1,000 and locking oneself into a year cell phone agreement, one can have all this in one portable device. I already have a cell phone, video iPod player, and Internet capable computer(s). My cell phone…