I bought several Jack Bilander etchings. Bilander was an artist in Chelsea, my neighborhood growing up in New York City. Lately I’ve had this urge to go there. I’ve built up an obsession, really, to return to my Grandmother’s apartment, to be in her space, to see the cheap 1960s parquet floors of Penn South, smell the esoteric scent of Jewish working class intelligentsia, and view a wall full of images still strikingly memorable forty years later. When I found a suite of Bilander’s pictures on Picasa, I sighed audibly, repeatedly, at how many of them summoned a vivid memory. So indelible and powerful. SomethingRead More →

At the beginning of the semester I had to give a speech at convocation. I chose to speak about why the start of a new semester is like a fortune cookie. Throughout the speech I periodically opened up a fortune cookie, read the fortune, and made a comment. It was a fun speech and people seemed to like it. People now give me fortune cookies and make jokes about it. I keep trying to explain that I don’t necessarily like to eat fortune cookies, but that I use them during Dungeons and Dragons. I just like to take the fortunes out and put them onRead More →

Let me introduce you to this cat. Her name is Monkey, which is short for Alien Monkey Cat. Some people call her AMC for short, but only on Facebook. She is visiting from another planet and she is residing with me for a time while she spies on us. I am using this as an opportunity to spread the word widely, and perhaps save the planet from takeover by her species. Be forewarned. They have dripping, venomous spikes in their tails. Now, just to be clear, the purpose of today’s post is to discuss the equinox broom phenomenon. A meme has been going around onRead More →