Category: My life

July 2017 Odds and Ends

My wife tells me that she gets annoyed when blogs she follows take too much time between posts. For mostly travel-related reasons, I have not been able to post a full article since July 6, and I will not be able to do so again for another week at least. Since my preference is never … Continue reading July 2017 Odds and Ends →

Writers Write, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Career Changes

What I can’t remember is whether my first exhortation to join the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) arrived in the mail before—or after—my 50th birthday in September 2016. What I do remember (because they are still neatly piled next to the printer, just a few inches to the left of my computer screen as … Continue reading Writers Write, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Career Changes →

We are not our resumes. Nor should we be.

When I enrolled at Yale University in September 1984, I was undecided between majoring in mathematics or political science. That decision was made much easier by my less-than-stellar performance in Math 230, then a required freshman math course. Beyond the objective difficult of the class, there are other reasons why I did not do as … Continue reading We are not our resumes. Nor should we be. →

Two distinct restaurants. Two different conversations. One unanswered question.

I spent many nights in the liberated summer between high school graduation and enrolling at Yale taking long solo drives, exploring outer suburban Philadelphia. One night, meandering along Route 23, I saw this at the intersection with Route 113N in Phoenixville: My idea of heaven was, and remains, a 24-hour diner, though less so when … Continue reading Two distinct restaurants. Two different conversations. One unanswered question. →

Film Noir: A Personal Journey

[Eds. note: This essay was the inspiration for my 2022 book Interrogating Memory: Film Noir Spurs a Deep Dive Into My Family History...and My Own. If you like what you read below, I think you will love the book.] A few years ago, I turned 48. On a lark, I decided to celebrate (in part) … Continue reading Film Noir: A Personal Journey →

How film noir made me appreciate my daughter’s birthday celebration even more

My eldest daughter (let’s call her MyED) turned nine yesterday. I know that MyED turned nine yesterday not only because I was at my wife’s side nine years ago yesterday when MyED was born, but because it is practically all anyone has heard from MyED, since…well, since her younger sister turned seven four months ago. … Continue reading How film noir made me appreciate my daughter’s birthday celebration even more →

Bipartisan, half of the time…

My first political memory is asking my parents for whom they were voting for president in 1972, President Richard Nixon or Democrat George McGovern. “McGovern” my parents said. And just like that, at the age of six, I became a Democrat. I am still a proud Democrat. Wait, you ask. Isn’t this blog a repository … Continue reading Bipartisan, half of the time… →

Welcome, and just bear with me…

The title of this blog is “Just Bear With Me…” When I tell a story, to me every detail and out-of-nowhere sidebar is part of an informational gestalt, but to a listener it can sound like a load of extraneous detail punctuated by annoying pauses to recall more extraneous details. The point is that, like most of us, I like to tell stories, and I have my own way to tell them. I particularly like telling stories resulting from the collection and analysis of data points. And I do get to the point…eventually.