My oldest daughter is at an age now, caught between implicit belief in things and learning how things really work. She can understand how it only seems that the sun rises and sets, but know that we’re on a rotating sphere, which in turn revolves around a cosmic, nuclear furnace. And yet she still believes [...]

(for Donnacha)   A while back, after a punishing rain, I helped clear out my mother’s basement of damaged boxes and old and useless things tucked down there for convenience’s sake, which had grown to an inconvenient tangle of things. Artifacts of our life, of my dad’s life. Important things. I was uniquely qualified to [...]

So my mother recently went to her 40th(45th?) High School reunion and had occasion to speak to an old friend of hers who was also my 7th grade English Teacher. Mrs. Galiette has the distinction of being the only education professional in my entire run of 6th to 8th grade who ended up liking me [...]

As the Youtube clip proves, somewhere out there, there’s a Josh who’s having a way more interesting birthday than I am. Share this:PrintFacebookDigg

It is the two-year anniversary of my dad dying today. Yesterday was his birthday; he very nearly Mark Twained, my Pop. A few days after he died, I found myself in rather a state. Processing not only the fact that he was gone and no longer here and no longer alive, but also, for the [...]

Twenty two years ago, my mother threw my father a surprise 50th birthday party. People from his past came, some across country, to attend… My parents were kind of poor as church-mice, so the guests actually had to pay for the honor of coming, in lieu of a gift. Which they did. My dad could [...]

Also, in honor of poetry-month (?), here’s a passage that I commited to memory when I was in High School and Walt Whitman was like revealed wisdom to me. My dad had given me a copy of Whitman’s collected works when I was in, like, 8th grade or so, after I made some dumb-ass statement about how [...]

I discovered Lin Manuel Miranda by way of my daughter’s love for the new hip-hop flavored ELECTRIC COMPANY on PBS. I resisted the reboot of my beloved classic at first; ELECTRIC COMPANY held a special place in my heart. As a kid in the late 70s, you took your live-action Spider-Man appearances wherever you could [...]

Sometimes, the universe gives you a nice little gift. I found an old ZIP disk (remember those?) that had my dad’s familiar idiosyncratic handwriting across the label. It had “Joel Stuff” as a header and “letters” and “musings” written in underneath. I was eager to read it, as it would be the closest I’m going [...]

So here’s something. We all have our personal mythologies; items and mementos that hold special meaning or that act as talismans to connect the past with the present and forge a notion of physical continuity between them. Something we remember from youth that exists to this day. For me, the necklace that lived around my [...]

In an alternate universe where I have a nephew who is soon to go to High School and seeking sage council and advice from his wise and learned Uncle Josh on how to approach the coming four years, I would sit him down and tell him a shameful story of cowardice and indecision. Three of [...]

(reposted from a Facebook Note from 2010) I’ve been accused in the past of having a “good memory,” and I always balk at the idea. I have a memory for detail, but I am always dismayed in the gaps I find, when I examine a time-period in my head. What I find is that I [...]