This Year’s Recital

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I’ve been doing these student recitals once a year for three years, since I started taking piano lessons. This year. I didn’t nail it but I didn’t botch it either. It was somewhere in-between. At the refreshment table after the recital, one of the piano teachers in attendance said to me with some surprise, “Your teacher is younger than you?” “Every person here is younger than me,” I pointed out. Read more →

Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink. — Shunryu Suzuki

 

For My Daughter

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When I die choose a star and name it after me that you may know I have not abandoned or forgotten you. You were such a star to me, following you through birth and childhood, my hand in your hand. When I die choose a star and name it after me so that I may shine down on you, until you join me in darkness and silence together. — David Ignatow, “For My Daughter” Read more →

One Thing I Can’t Tolerate is Intolerance: BYU Edition

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What values are we talking about? Tolerance for sexual preferences? What about tolerance for religious beliefs? You want tolerance for what makes you different but you’re not willing to extend tolerance to what makes others different? That’s not tolerance. There’s a word for what that is, and it’s not tolerance. What about inclusiveness? Is inclusiveness a good value? Should the Big 12 exclude BYU to promote inclusiveness? That’s not inclusiveness. Read more →

On-Again, Off-Again Respect for Grieving Parents

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Hey, remember when the first night of the Republican convention featured Patricia Smith, mother of Sean Smith, one of the Americans slain in Benghazi? Remember how her speech was called a “cynical exploitation of grief”? Or the “unabashed exploitation of private people’s grief” or “the weaponization of grief”? Remember how she “ruined the evening”? How it was,  â€œa spectacle so offensive, it was hard to even comprehend”? How some liberal commentators said, “Mrs. Smith was really most interested in drinking blood rather than healing”? How her speech represented an “early dip into the gutter”? Remember how a GQ writer publicly expressed a desire to beat her to death? — National Review Read more →

How Do I Know If I’m Gay?

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Here’s what I learned on the internet today: Gay refers to any male-identified person who is physically or emotionally attracted to other male-identified people. Lesbian refers to any female-identified person who is physically or emotionally attracted to other female-identified people. So if I’m a male-identified person and I’m physically attracted to a biological female, who looks and dresses in every respect like a female, but identifies as male, am I gay? Read more →

Good to Great

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Browsing a bookstore with my son . . . he checks in to say that he was skimming through Good to Great. “Have you read it?” he asks. “No, and I’ll tell you why . . .” “Because you’re satisfied with just being good?” he interrupts. Read more →

The Man in the Arena

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t is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. — Theodore Roosevelt, from the speech “Citizenship In A Republic,”… Read more →

Jill Stein on Leaked DNC Emails

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The leaked DNC emails are the smoking gun that the Democratic establishment was rigging the game against Bernie the whole time. Instead of running the process impartially and letting the voters decide, top Democratic officials were doing all they could to ensure a Clinton victory, including collusion with journalists to present a pro-Clinton, anti-Sanders narrative. You want to affirm a corrupt party that just dragged you across the coals? You expect your supporters, who have a vision and who voted for integrity, to follow you into this shithole? Is there no respect here for his campaign and for himself? Are they just going to pretend it didn’t happen? I think it would be very hard for a self-respecting Sanders supporter, in light of these revelations, to take the beating and humiliate themselves and disrespect themselves, to go into the campaign and support the predator who destroyed them. How is Hillary… Read more →

Lost in Translation

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Via Philip Greenspun: Tel Aviv cab driver: “I told my kids that the only place ‘Success’ comes before ‘Hard Work’ is in the dictionary.” (works better in Hebrew, presumably) Read more →

Flag Burner Lights Himself On Fire

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It is unfortunate that Trump’s rhetoric prevents the GOP from recruiting these fine Americans . . . Protestor lit flag on fire, then lit himself on fire, catching others on fire. Flames extinguished by firefighters. No serious injuries. — Cleveland Police (@CLEpolice) July 20, 2016 Read more →

Aside

He who is outside his door has the hardest part of his journey behind him. — Dutch proverb

Who Does Amazon Fresh?

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Our office uses Amazon Fresh to get food delivered, so when a colleague posts “Who does Amazon Fresh again?” on the messaging system, what he means is “Remind me who is responsible for placing the Amazon Fresh orders.” Here is the actual answer: “I think it’s a company started by Amazon the online retailer.” Read more →

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