Category Archives: Current Events

Five Years Later

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were horrifying. We should never forget the murdered civilians and sacrificed lives of the police officers, firefighters, Flight 93 passengers, and other brave men and women. And it’s likely we as a nation won’t forget, thanks to the work of the national memory system–Hollywood–in depicting […]

Memorial Day Bike Trip

Sock Monkey

Today we received a surprise present in the mail from my Uncle Jim and Aunt Margaret: this Rockford sock monkey for our upcoming baby boy. Sock monkeys originate in my mother’s hometown of Rockford, Illinois, where one John Nelson invented a sock-knitting machine in the 1880s. The distinctive red heel that makes the monkey’s mouth […]

il feto del filosofo

Even though my wife’s only eight weeks into the pregnancy and the kid’s just two centimeters long, today we could see fingers, a heartbeat (at 167 beats a minute), and the occasional wiggle.

Where There’s No FEMA, There’s Still a Way

Kudos to Gulfport’s mayor Brent Warr. When the local hospital needed gas for its power generators, he had his chief of police steal a fuel truck. “Can we hot-wire it?” he asked. Barnes said, “I wasn’t cut out to be a crook; that’s why I went into law enforcement.” “Well, can we get someone from […]

Four Years Ago

Like most Americans, the events of that day horrified me and still do. I wish I could adequately express my respect for the men and women who died trying to save others’ lives, whether as first responders in Manhattan or passengers aboard Flight 93. I found these entries from blogs in my feed reader helpful […]