No Regrets
I have donated my collection of books on writing to my local library. Why?
Essays
My NBA Love Affairs
The Golden State Warriors’ broadcast on a local station was an excuse for Stanford students to congregate in common rooms and eating clubs, a break from studying and a topic of conversation. Plus, the Warriors of 1986-87 were a lovable, ragtag, perennially second-tier squad whose best player, Eric “Sleepy” Floyd, was famous for having the league’s most apt nickname.
Trumpeter Swan
According to the notes in my old National Geographic bird guide, on November 8, 1980, I saw a trumpeter swan at the Crabtree Nature Center in Barrington Hills, Illinois. A life bird. My mother had been in the hospital in downtown Chicago for nearly two months.
The Crafts of Freedom
April 2, 2015 We rightly associate Martin Luther King Jr.’s oratorical eloquence with his vocation as a Baptist minister, following his father and grandfather before him. But King also emerged from the rhetorical tradition of the liberal arts, transforming the sources with which he engaged throughout his too-brief life.
Little Lost Girl
Sometimes during my wanderings, I would hear an announcement over the public address system for a child who had been lost. The microphone would crackle, then I’d hear “We have a little lost girl,” followed by her name and a description. The announcements seemed plaintive, urgent, important.
A Tennessee Christmas
Cutting one’s own Christmas tree certainly does evoke images of a happy family pulling a sleigh through snowy landscapes in the Appalachian Mountains. But my family’s Christmas tree acquisition process wasn’t quite what Norman Rockwell had in mind.
