“I Slept Like Firewood” Rene Auberjonois in the Bob Newhart Show In memory of Sheldon and For Ronak Perhaps it was the fond memories of camping with my dad in the Adirondacks feeding logs into a fire in front of our lean-to.  Or perhaps it was one memory, my good friend Sheldon and I gazing into the flames licking the walls of his fireplace, and the two of us simply enjoying the primeval warmth...

Breakfast With Andre I was invited, along with other spouses, to Polley’s bimonthly breakfast with elementary school colleagues, people who specialized in helping other people’s children succeed in the learning process. As one grows older, the friendships and relationships one maintains in his twenties, college chums and new co-workers, are added to by the society one’s children enters.  In...

Power Play On a late spring day I walked out of my school hefting a folder filled with eighty essays that had to be graded.  As I walked to the faculty parking lot, I was joined by Matilda, a senior in one of my English classes.  Matilda was not fond of reading Huxley or Dickens or Shakespeare, but she was pleasant and quiet….one of those students who silently glides through the system on good...

Remote Choices My dad was an electrician, a very good one.  As he mastered the intricacies of alternating and direct current, he developed certain beliefs that he held with an almost religious conviction. One of these strongly held tenets postulated that it was sinful to pay over $150 for a black and white television when a good electrician can restore a slightly damaged device for peanuts. ...

Hour of the Wolf As Polley, my guest blogger, wrote last week, I was in the hospital for a serious condition(my gratitude to her for writing a superb blog----okay, I am prejudiced). Every night I went to sleep around 11 PM and awoke at 1 AM and stayed awake.  I spent some of the dark hours reading my history book or watching dubbed movies about the collapse of ancient Rome featuring scantily...