And, no, it is not a turkey. These words were spoken to me by my daughter, Zeneba, when she and her husband, Matt, called us this morning on a Thanksgiving call from Soriano, Italy. She said them to me after I was telling her the following story on that phone call. The encounter with the […]
Tag Archives: memoir
The Hegins Pigeon Shoot may not be known to you unless you like to murder pigeons or you grew up in Schuylkill County as I did. Hegins (pronounced ‘Higgens’ – don’t know why but perhaps since it is Germanic in nature it comes from some Pennsylvania Dutch usage in that area) was the location for […]
This is an appeal to veterans after the Trump response to Khizr Kahn and his speech at the DNC. Kahn asked Trump to tell us what he has sacrificed. Trump has had two responses – one was his mealy mouthed response that he has sacrificed – he has created jobs – he has made […]
I am sick of the killings. I don’t want black men shot in the streets. I don’t want cops shot by a sniper. I don’t want children shot in schools. I do not want any of this. When I began writing this blog entry only the Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights shootings had […]
This will at least be the beginning of the telling of this story. I recently read an article in The Atlantic that was titled ‘Why Teachers of Color Quit’. This article was brought to my attention by a former teacher friend and colleague, and the article resonated with me, making me think again about the […]
I was born and raised in a working class, coal mining town in Pennsylvania. That past has been popping up in my thoughts as Carol and I have recently been searching for a house. It seems that the fact that the most money I have in my wallet at any one time never exceeds twenty […]
I have been writing a number of blog entries about my teaching experiences, but have included some family stories and now, another story about my experiences as a volunteer in a wildlife clinic. I am working on a blog entry about the ethical dilemmas facing teachers in this era of standardized teaching and standardized tests, […]
I vividly recall the first words of advice the wildlife rehabilitator gave me just after he had demonstrated for me how to hold on to a hawk’s legs while he examined the hawk — “Don’t worry if you get an itch or sweat in your eyes. Don’t worry if a hurricane or an earthquake strikes. […]
I really should have known better and hindsight told me that I would have been correct – never take the word of a native Minnesotan that he knows what he is doing when it comes to shark hunting in the Red Sea. I was stationed in Ethiopia when I was in the service many decades […]
An opinion piece was written recently in the Washington Post by Carol Anderson, and it is titled “Ferguson isn’t about black rage against cops. It’s white rage against progress.” In the piece she states that “White rage recurs in American history. It exploded after the Civil War, erupted again to undermine the Supreme Court’s Brown […]
tremphil 