YourSite - Slogan Here!

15 Years Ago Today

Fifteen years ago today, I stood up in a tuxedo in front of my friends and family and watched the most beautiful woman in the world walk down an aisle towards me while a string trio played classical music and everyone we knew watched us stand together and speak magic words that would change us [...]

Me and Mark Twain, Down By the Schoolyard: A Love Story

So on Friday, February 22, 2013, I had somehow found my way to being a featured storyteller at an event called “The MOuTH at the Mark Twain House.” It was organized and spearheaded by NPR personality, voice, and all-around-rockstar Chion Wolf. Originally, it was supposed to be in conjunction with the MOTH Radio people, but [...]

The Introduction to The Book I Wrote

Hopefully, one day you all might get a chance to read it.  A Forward for Parents (Children, feel free to skip this part and get to the good stuff) “Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as “historical” in the children’s library; for the time has come for [...]

For Jacinda, on her Pre-School Graduation

My littlest one goes to kindergarten next fall. Quite a journey from that early diagnosis and intervention. We’re still on it, the journey, to be sure. But there are no words to tell how amazed or how proud I am of this brilliant, tough, wonderful little girl, who taught herself how to learn in the [...]

The Golden Hour

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 [...]

A Letter From My Dad, to Himself. But Also to Me.

(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 [...]

My 7th Grade English Teacher is Reading My Blog

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 [...]

You Say It’s Your Birthday? It’s My Birthday, Too, Yeah!

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

2 Years and The Night I Went Crazy

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 [...]

Sure I Do. He’s Fartman!

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 [...]

The Poem That Changed My Life

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 [...]

Alexander Hamilton: Original Gangsta

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 [...]