A few years ago, I wrote about how my daughter, Elizabeth, wanted to change her major. I said that considering some of the “news” she had dropped on us, this was nothing. In fact, I wrote, eloquent as ever, that it was “No big deal.” [Read more →]
TweetI don’t know what you did over the holidays, but I went out and became an international TikTok sensation. Kind of. [Read more →]
TweetNot many people love the holiday season more than me. Very few things are capable of bothering me this time of year.
On that exception list is luxury car commercials. [Read more →]
TweetThis opinion piece I wrote appeared today in The Burlington County Times: “Guest Opinion: If you leave New Jersey, it’s your loss.”
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Conversations about the mind and sports that I have participated in over the years have tended to consist of topics like mind over body, “training” the mind, etc. Now there’s a different, and growing, dialogue: Mental health and sports. [Read more →]
TweetSometimes in an unexpected, tucked-away place I’ll come across a piece of writing that hits home. Brandon Day, a veteran youth wrestling coach, wrote a piece for the Times Herald in Port Huron, Michigan, and he opens bluntly: “After 17 years coaching at the high school level, I am not a big fan of the youth sports culture in America today”. [Read more →]
TweetPALMYRA, NJ – Arts programming at Palmyra High School (PHS) will receive a boost of $18,000 following a Casino Night community fundraiser organized by the school’s education foundation. [Read more →]
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Prolific author, poet and Tolkien scholar, David Day, is well-known to serious readers of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. My own shelves already contained his Tolkien: The Illustrated Encyclopedia and A Tolkien Bestiary. They’re cool, and all, but I am kind of a peculiar sort of Tolkien reader who has never been one to “nerd-out” over the details of Middle Earth (Tolkien’s fantasy world). I really could not care less whether the Dwarves (that’s how he spelled it) of the Iron Hills have coarser beards than those in Moria or whether the Balrog has real or metaphoric wings. As a consequence, Day’s other two books, outside of a fun hour or two after purchase, haven’t really gotten a lot of use. They are pretty; they are fun to look through and they are meticulously researched, but, over the years, they have gotten only the occasional thumbing-through when I was confused about a name or a place during one of my numerous Tolkien rereads — which, to be fair, is what the books are really for: reference.
Day’s new book, An Encyclopedia of Tolkien: the History and Mythology that Inspired Tolkien’s World is something familiar, yet quite different from the long list of Tolkien encyclopedias and dictionaries and guides already in print by all sorts of authors. This book is the kind of resource “literary” Tolkien readers will appreciate and it is also the one that is most likely to coax the younger fans who came over to the books from the Peter Jackson films into curiosity about the foundations and inspirations for Tolkien’s world. [Read more →]
TweetMy boys have never watched football, and I have counted this as a parental failing. [Read more →]
TweetThis past weekend, we moved child #2, our son Nate, into college. The next stop on his life and educational path: Drexel University. [Read more →]
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We just took the boys, teenagers both, to the pediatrician. Now that they’re 15 and 18, that paper we get listing healthy behaviors is more complicated and involved than when they were five and eight. Eat fresh fruit, don’t do drugs, look both ways before crossing the street–but you really wanna help your kids have healthy, happy lives?: Teach them how to zero out their email inboxes. [Read more →]
TweetI am an English Professor, so I am invested in demonstrating that students who major in English are successful, as measured in various ways. Keep in mind, thought, that I would consider it unethical to persuade a student to major in English simply because it’s my field: Instead, it’s my field because I believe in its value. [Read more →]
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If you’re lucky, your boys are eager readers. If you’re really lucky, your boys are eager writers. But in many households, of course, neither is the case, and folks are in the midst of summer book battles. [Read more →]
TweetI have this image in my mind, a little movie, although I can’t remember where I saw it (perhaps it was one of my vivid dreams): A dad pulls into the driveway after a day of work. His tiny son is playing with a truck in the yard. When the boy sees dad the truck drops from his hand, as if it didn’t exist, and the boy scampers over. The dad sweeps him up.
I love that image. [Read more →]
TweetAt one point, my wife and I were young guns, a couple with small kids. We moved into our neighborhood 18 years ago, and it was full of children. Ours were among the youngest. When our “Lane gang” went to school those first few years, the group pic had 20+ kids. But each year, the number dwindled, until there were only three or four kids. The lane, for a few years, was quiet. [Read more →]
TweetWe are not strict parents. My boys are the only ones home now, and while I don’t think I should be their best bud, we have an easy, pleasant rapport. However, I sometimes think my reluctance to disrupt that rapport has prevented me from laying down the hammer.
TweetAs a parent, you are lead to believe that part of your job is to impart wisdom. You quickly realize that curve of wisdom climbs upward snugly alongside the curve of your progeny’s ages. [Read more →]
TweetI had a specific reason for watching the NFL draft last weekend: I was waiting to see when Kelvin Harmon, a wide receiver from North Carolina State who played his high school football at my local high school, Palmyra, was going to be drafted. [Read more →]
TweetWhen I received my review copy of “Winter Gets Hot” from LibraryThing, all I really knew about the book and its merits was that it was – according to the jacket, at least – “The eagerly anticipated sequel to ‘Winter In Chicago.’”
I wasn’t familiar with that book or its author, David M. Hamlin. But after reading this ‘eagerly anticipated sequel,’ I will probably be searching for that earlier work, adding it to my e-bookshelf, and learning more about Emily Winter’s introduction to the Windy City, and vice-versa.
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My dissertation advisor, Dr. Eli Goldblatt, is retiring after many years at Temple University. I wrote the following as part of a tribute to the great man that took place at Temple on April 1.
“A Real Advisor (We’ll Call Him ‘Eli’) and a Gloomy, Lethargic, Uncertain Grad Student (GLUGS)”
A short play. [Read more →]
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