“We’ll get one more.”
I like really good food. I like really good food at really good restaurants. The kind of restaurants with white tablecloths and dim lighting. The kind where the waiters place your napkin for you and come get the crumbs off the table between courses with those cool crumb scoop things. The kind where the menu […]
Pyracantha and ‘Good for Nothing.’
On the west side of the lot in the house where I spent my teenage years, was a huge row of this hedge-type bush called Pyracantha. (Yes, I had to ask my mom what it was called.) The specific kind we had is officially named Teton Firethorn, but our name for it was a little […]
Graduation Season – and other spaces.
For many (many!) years, Memorial Day weekend was super stressful for me. It was usually the final push before high school graduation. Graduation – at least back then – was always the first week in June. And my whole job was graduation – making sure every last kid who could walk, did. There were parents […]
A little thank you – and something new.
In 2018, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania set out to understand how social norms shift – how real change happens, not just in theory, but in groups of people living real lives. They designed an experiment where participants were asked to label a simple image. But midway through the task, a small group of […]
The Deck We Don’t Use.
The deck we don’t use. Last year we redid our deck. It had been built with basic builder’s grade wood – nothing fancy, and never meant to last. It didn’t hold paint well, it needed constant maintenance, and no matter how many times we power-washed or re-stained, it still looked tired. So we made a […]
Olly Olly Oxen Nope (the fish follow-up!)
Exactly a year ago, I wrote about a childhood game of hide and seek – and about a belief I wanted to let go of: “I can’t change.” To make it tangible (and a little silly), I gave myself a goal:Learn to like seafood. More specifically: become the kind of person who doesn’t automatically say […]
Elisha Otis and building some safety.
According to Mark Crawford, writing for The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Elisha Graves Otis was born in 1811, the youngest of six children. At age 20, Otis made a rough living as a wagon driver and carpenter – work that proved too demanding for his health to sustain for long. At age 27, he […]
