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Please help make these families’ holidays stronger, smarter, happier!
You may be new to this event, or perhaps you’ve supported our efforts in past years. For seven years my family and more than a dozen of our friends have volunteered to help stage a holiday event for...
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What will the children do with all those rectangles? This and other Holiday...
Yesterday I posted this photo on Facebook, with the cryptic pronouncement that I wouldn’t stop working until 1,600 flannel rectangles were sewn together. I started in the morning, and didn’t stop until...
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We’re doing one better this year than the food basket giveaway
I’m excited to report that for the first time, we’re eliminating our drawing for food baskets … because we’ve giving one to every family who attends! In the past, I’ve felt like I was watching an...
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We fed 300 people and enriched the lives of 143 children and their families
Today is a work day for me, so I’ll be brief. Last night was the 2014 Holiday Head Start Event, and it was bigger and better than ever. Not only did every single family that attended go home with a...
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Example portraits from the 2014 Holiday event
In some ways I had it easy, because during the flurry of activity that was the 2014 Head Start Holiday event, I was behind one of two color printers that were producing the family photos. I was well...
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My most gutsy prediction yet: FMT will become commonplace
Unappealing qualities: We all have them. I have more than my share. Among mine is a face that, let’s be real, only a mother could love. (Its stock consequently plummeted four years ago with the the...
View ArticleWhen I go to see my grandmother I gain a lot of weight
The headline is just one of the wonderful lines from this lovely song by the idiosyncratic Greg Brown. “You can taste a little of the summer. My grandma put it all in jars.”
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Pied Beauty by Gerald Manley Hopkins
I recently found this poem, by Victorian poet Gerald Manly Hopkins. The bucolic imagery somehow seems appropriate for early Spring. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do: Pied Beauty Glory be to God for...
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Many years later, a laser that does something
When I was in the sixth grade, I got my hands on small fragments of a one-way mirror, and, following descriptions I read about in the encyclopedia set we had in our basement, I took other components (a...
View ArticlePossibly my favorite poem ever
The last three lines of this are a bit of a mantra for me, something I try hard to ask myself when I get too hung up on details and nonsense. The Summer Day by Mary Oliver Who made the world? Who made...
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Warmth for children on a cold Midwestern night
You may have just seen these photos posted on the Holiday Head Start site. As I write this, it is an extremely chilly November night with winds (if you’ll pardon the melodrama) literally howling...
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Won’t you consider a gift for this Giving Tuesday?
Today’s headlines included news that Wisconsin’s food stamps rules would become tighter, just in time for the holidays. But I was more heartened by this news a groundswell of support for Give Tuesday:...
View ArticleFriday’s Holiday Head Start event was another huge success!
Now that the dust has settled on the event (or perhaps that’s glitter?) I am thrilled to tell our wonderful donors what they helped support. Actually, I’m going to let Sherry, our co-leader along with...
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The Art of Authorship
I enjoy writing. And once every three months or so, like a familiar spasm that arrives out of the blue, I think about writing a book. A real book. The book. It’s the one I’ve been planning and...
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Podcasts that helped me survive Election 2016
It’s been a tough Presidential election season to get through. Especially if you’re like me, and you started following the proceedings early. I watched Biden decide not to run. And I witnessed sixteen...
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How do I love thee, podcasts?
How do I love thee, podcasts? Let me count the ways. I’ve come up with five, right off the top of my head. They span comedy, news and current events, design, music and even history. Why Now? #TryPod...
View ArticleOn Progress and Pronouns
This was originally posted on my local workplace’s Diversity blog. That post is behind a firewall. The following rumination is given in the same spirit as the theatrical performance that inspired it:...
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A Visit To The Web Wayback Machine
You’ve got to love an internet project whose goal is to preserve in amber the many life stages of web pages from the web’s two-decade history. Currently the Web Wayback Machine boasts 286 billion web...
View ArticleConfessions of a Hamilton Fanboy
I was skeptical. The hype surrounding Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway sensation seemed too good to be believed. But once I bought the original cast recording, I was convinced. And hopelessly obsessed....
View ArticleFedEx won’t give me my new phone
Dear FedEx: I’ve given you folks many opportunities this week to delight me, or at least not infuriate me. You blew every one of them. And Dear FedEx customer (who is reading this now): Is what I am...
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