I did a Google image search for “Live in the Present” and took the screen shot of the results, above. I have heard this admonition a lot in my life, but I think it’s a really bad idea. Right now, we’re in a weird moment in history. Some of us have a lot of time…
“Why”…Wednesdays
76. Why Never is the Time
I love the smell of lilacs, so I really enjoy walking around our beautiful campus in the spring, when the many bushes are blooming. Of course, I get to enjoy this smell for only a few weeks each year. I don’t know if this ephemeral quality makes me like the smell more or just reminds…
75. Why Being Not-Racist Is Not Enough
The photos (above and below) show a Black Lives Matter protest in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on Saturday, June 6, 2020. I was deeply moved by the protest, but I fully acknowledge that protests alone aren’t enough. As one poster there said, “This rally is performative. What are you going to DO now?” I’m pretty new…
74. Why Moonwalk (A Guest Post)
[For a while, I’ve been contemplating inviting guest bloggers to write a Why Wednesday post for my site, so when my friend and colleague Keith Moon shared this wonderful essay with my department, I asked him if I could publish it here. I’m grateful that he said yes for two main reasons. First, he’s a…
73. Why “Up Next” Hurts Us
If you’ve ever read any of my earlier Why Wednesday posts or have ever seen me out walking my dog, you probably know that I listen to a lot of podcasts. One pair of geniuses I might not know anything about without all my podcast listening is Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. (To be fair…
72. Why Parenting is Hard
These photos show my daughters when they were younger; now, clocking in at eighteen and twenty-one years old, they’ve both reached milestone adult ages. Somehow, the parenting hasn’t gotten easier. When they were little, as you can tell from the photos, I didn’t spend any time worrying about how tangled they got their hair or…
71. Why Senior Spring
I have two daughters. Just after one of them turned twenty-one in one of the cities most world-famous for its parties and fun, she had to leave college to come live in isolation with her parents in rural Connecticut (not famous for fun). For her, I hope the world goes back to normal this fall…
70. Why Anything is Everything
The amazingly smart people at Peloton are giving 90-day free trial memberships right now (though I apologize if the deal is over by the time this blog posts, as I’ve gotten a little ahead in writing since I don’t have much else going on). Anyway, I’ve been trying to keep active by walking outside a…
69. Why Finish What You Start
Usually, I take the photos I use on my site, but my sink is empty because I had the idea for this post as I was cleaning it out. Anyway, the photo above came from Jane’s Kitchen Miracle, a site that looks pretty good and certainly is getting at what I wanted to talk about…
68. Why Social Distancing
A lot of people would say that where I live is the middle of nowhere. They’re wrong, of course. In fact, this town has easy access to NYC, Boston, Albany, and other places. The town of Lakeville might not be big enough to have a grocery store, but the location allows its residents to feel…