Going to an exciting, late-night New Year’s Eve party? Me neither. And this year, those of us who prefer a quiet, reflective evening at home don’t even have to feel so profoundly uncool. It’s what everyone—everyone with any sense—is doing this weekend. Still, I’m looking forward to sweeping out all the bad luck of 2020 … Read More
Michael and I invented Camp Remowas twenty years ago, when the kids went off to camp every summer. Money was tight in those days. (College was looming, weeks off work were few, and parents lived far away. We both worked two jobs, and relaxing vacations were few and far between.) One afternoon, I said plaintively, … Read More
What do contemporary Americans regard as a satisfactory resolution for a young man’s spiritual quest? What do we want our heroes to learn and to become? That’s the question I began to ask over the past few weeks, as I (like a lot of other Americans) watched the second season of The Mandalorian. I … Read More
By one of those lovely coincidences that sometimes happen, I was reading Dani Shapiro’s Inheritance (about various kinds of fathers and what we inherit from them) when I got the call last week that my father’s clock was repaired and ready for pickup. My father was a railroad man—the kind who didn’t just work for … Read More
It will be strange, this afternoon, to sit down to turkey for two. We will miss the kids and grandkids—though, like many others, we will spend time on Facebook and Zoom with them. But we will light the candles, carve the turkey, serve out stuffing and cranberry sauce (two kinds, by way of marital accommodation), … Read More
This week, I have a guest blogger–my good friend Brian Fay. He’s a retired professor of philosophy at Wesleyan University, a thoughtful guy, and a good buddy. He talks about paying attention to our souls (our basic attitudes or orientations toward life, reality, and the universe) and “gerotranscendence” (which, to Brian, definitely doesn’t mean leaping … Read More
When I was growing up in the southern Midwest, our house had no air conditioning. Most people didn’t mind the heat too much—at least until that week in August when it would get oven hot. During that week, we often had two-shower days. Yesterday, when the temperature plummeted, the rain fell relentlessly, and the clouds … Read More
This crazy election week is a good time to be thinking about the Tao Te Ching. The Tao is a classic of early Chinese spirituality , an elusive, lyrical meditation on how to live in dark and dangerous times. Unlike Confucian thinking, which emphasizes social order (with its reliance on law, stability, and hierarchy), the … Read More
I can’t bear to think about the election. Also, I can’t bear not to. On average, I get twenty emails and two texts a day about it, asking for money or asking me to volunteer. (I have no idea how many phone calls I get a day because I just don’t answer.) I force myself … Read More
Years ago, my friend Susan took a class of college kids off to visit Middleton Plantation, outside Charleston. One of the few plantations not to be burned by Sherman’s troops, it was probably a terrible place for the slaves who worked the land, but now it’s lovely and quiet, a mansion of mellow brick set … Read More