Looking back, one of the great disappointments of my youth was my inability to have a fully functional romantic relationship with any of the number of intelligent, charming, vivacious young women I had the good fortune to get to know and who were interested in me romantically. Oh the first, second and third base, and who knows what other shared adventures I could have had with this wonderful coterie of female companions! I try not to have regrets, but I still do from time to time. (more…)

Our son Eric and daughter Emma found a profound landscape for exploration, adventure, and development, beyond the realm of school and “formal” education, on the Internet. Now in the 21st Century, our kids are exploring a “World Wide Web”, as virtual as the experience of the “Wild West” has been to the wannabe cowboys of the 20th Century, and perhaps as profound.

In the 19th and 20th Century Americans were inspired by the mythology, if not the reality, of the old west. For those few people who actually blazed the trails and “settled” the wilderness (often at the expense or even destruction of the native population), their lives were surely difficult and their world dangerous, but there stories were compelling and inspired American culture. (more…)

The concept of “deep learning” is very big these days in critiques of our educational system. Some argue (and I for one agree) that our voluminous public school state-mandated curriculum requirements are in fact too broad, and don’t give students the opportunity to go in depth into particular areas of interest. The argument continues that immersing oneself in the details of a particular area of great interest inspires a person to “learn how to learn”. Outside the context of something really interesting to sink ones teeth into, learning to research a topic in a library or on the Internet can be a dry and boring exercise, and inhibit or retard the development of a very critical skill. (more…)

After my parents divorced in 1965 (when I was ten years old), my mother became quite a party-giver. She had already plunged into local Ann Arbor politics as a precinct chair for the Democratic Party and a campaign manager for several men who ran for local offices. Our house was regularly filled by a sampling of some of Ann Arbor’s most interesting university professors, well-educated wives of university professors, and other political animals. Usually the food and drink was very simple, almost minimalist. Her favorite menu was spaghetti, with her special recipe of sauce, salad, and Bloody Maries to drink, served out of a big crock.

Jane was the maestro of all her parties, carefully designing the guest list so that everyone coming would find several other people they would be interested in meeting or be stimulated by encountering again. Then as the guests arrived and the party got underway, she would move about and make sure that everyone encountered their counterparts as per her plan. With the booze and the tasty food, it made for an energetic swirl of conversation, debate and argument, much of it political. (more…)

I was born on April 2, 1955 in the maternity ward of the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor Michigan. My mother Jane had gotten her bachelors’ degree in sociology two years earlier and my father Eric at this point was a graduate student in English Literature. Based on what I was told by both of them I was a project jointly planned and profusely anticipated.

As part of that plan, around the time of my birth, Jane and Eric moved from the apartment where they had been living to one a couple miles away on South State Street, closer to the University campus, but also uniquely suited to their idea of raising a young child. Just across the street from their upstairs apartment was the practice field for the football team, a large enclosure of manicured green grass lawn maybe 150 yards on each side, surrounded on three sides by a brick wall and on the fourth side by railroad tracks of a small rail yard (where freight cars seemed always to be parked) separated by a high chain link fence. It had several entrance doors that were latched but not locked, so it represented a contained space where a young child could wander, but not leave, all the while easily in view of an adult seated anywhere within the space. Though the football team practiced their often in afternoons during the fall, most of the time it was vacant. (more…)

After my mom and dad divorced in 1965 (when I was 10, see “Jane & Eric Get Divorced”), and as I advanced into adolescence, I became more and more my mom’s closest confidante, not always totally willingly. She would invite me into her room and I would sit on the rocking chair opposite her, she sitting on her bed, often with all the family bills spread out on the comforter, triaging what to pay and what could be put off until the next month. I think trying to pay the bills with too little money was particularly traumatic for her and having someone else in the room to vent to made it somewhat more bearable.

She shared with me her residual anger with my dad. He had promised her that once he got his PhD and his teaching position that she would be able to continue her education and find a good career position for her self, but now, in her state of anxiety and single-parenthood, this was very difficult. She shared her understanding of some of the sexual details of his affair with their mutual acquaintance, and her continuing anger at his conduct, much to my discomfort. (more…)

In 1965 when I was ten years old, my mom and dad got divorced. It was a family cataclysm that had been a long time coming, a severe emotional trauma in many ways, and a relief in others.

Now at age 53 I look back at the years leading up to my parents’ breakup – old pictures, my memories and my brother’s, and recalling things my mom shared with me later. I have pictures of my parents standing together (for the picture presumably) with happy smiles on their faces. I remember them together in the front seat of the car when we took trips to visit family or vacation back east, or taking us out to dinner at some local restaurant.

But in the years leading to their divorce in 1965, I also remember my mom’s angry words to my dad that there was not enough money, that she felt like a drudge, and that she needed the opportunity to pursue her own development as my dad was working for his PhD and later as a college professor. My dad would not say so much in response except to express his hurt at her anger and that he was doing the best that he could. Often later, after one of their verbal “fights”, he would share privately with me how frustrating she was. (more…)

During my last several years in Ann Arbor, (between 1975 and 1978), I got a job at a very popular local restaurant, “The Cottage Inn”, as a cook. I was 20 at the time, and had no professional experience in this field, but their “chef” was willing to train me and the other young men they had hired to prep food and cook “short-orders”, including burgers, sandwiches, omelets, and their featured food, pizzas. Beyond learning how to make coleslaw and cook a hamburger medium-rare without cutting it open, I learned some basic project management skills, including the concept of identifying and taking account for the “critical path” to minimize the time it would take for project completion. (more…)

Why are some things so simple to explain but so hard to understand? So often I stood in my own way so I failed to see the truth. Something as mundane as being a twelve-year-old tasked by my mother with emptying the kitchen trash can when it was full.

My mom clearly explained the job to me. I should keep an eye on the kitchen trash can, and when it was full I should take it out and dump it in the trash can outside. Pretty simple stuff, right? But invariably the trash in the kitchen would build up to overflowing and my mom would have to remind me to take it out, which I would immediately do. “So what’s the problem?” I thought. (more…)

When I first got involved in theater (see “JLO”) I was focused on doing work backstage and despite a brief and reasonably successful experience in Junior High (see TBD), was still generally too shy to consider being onstage as well. But some of my latent desire and external circumstances led me on a path to put me under the lights in front of an audience by my junior year in high school.

Prior to that, my combination of timidity and low self esteem made me very reluctant to take the spotlight, though at some level I longed to be acknowledged as talented or at least capable. My work backstage in several theater productions with JLO and my high school’s drama club had given me some of that longed for acknowledgement of competence at least as a lighting and set designer and a person who could pound out some sort of stage adaption however limited or flawed (see “Lord of the Flies”) on my portable electric typewriter. (more…)