being not doing

“We’re going to strengthen our critical thinking and our writing skills. These can be revolutionary tools if we make them so.”Ronald Takaki1939—2009. You’ll be missed, Dr. Takaki. By all of us who embraced your approach to understanding the country in which we live and honoring its rich history, and who pushed ourselves and our students [...]

One of the many ways in which last week did not go exactly as planned involved the robot giving up the ghost and refusing to drive forward when I set it up to clean the living room. The robot was a gift from my parents, on which we’ve become quite dependent over the past 18 [...]

We took two days to drive home from Hilton Head, stopping in Raleigh and spending the night at the Oakwood Inn. The Inn was (apparently) the first bed and breakfast in the city, and is located in the historic Oakwood neighborhood. The neighborhood has its own very nicely published walking tour guide to the homes, [...]

The one blight on our trip to Hilton Head was our experience with the timeshare hawkers, Hilton Head Guest Services. On the surface, it seems like not such a bad trade-off: you sit through a presentation about their timeshare system (they’re a participant in the RCI program) and they give you some coupons and gift [...]

About five years ago, I realized that I could have homemade pie whenever I wanted if I baked it myself. Like most profound insights in life, this was completely obvious after the fact and I wondered at how I had spent so many pie-free years living in ignorance. No more! Since then, I’ve moved from [...]