On a recent Saturday night, I found myself sitting on the floor reading notes from a graduate class in philosophy taught by Bud Ruf (pronounced “roof”). Even in my 30s, I could not bring myself to call him “Bud,” but always “professor” or “doctor,” to his annoyance. “Call me Bud,” he would say, and I would reply, “OK…Doctor Ruf.” I understand his...
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This English teacher’s heart beat more quickly this past week, reading quotes from so many people who seem to have read George Orwell’s work. Of course, it also was laden with the hope that people had actually read Orwell’s 1984. As time went on, I realized that it’s easier to invoke an idea of intelligence than it is to actually dwell in the realm of...
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Once in a while, an idea takes hold of me and sets me off on a hamster wheel of adventure—always scrambling, but not quite arriving anywhere. My singular mission the past few weeks has been finding a recipe for pumpkin pie. Not any pie, mind you, but the ice cream pumpkin pie my mother made for Thanksgiving sometime back in the late 1970s. It was the first...
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Recently, I dreamt that I wore a high-necked lacey blouse, hair done in a Gibson-girl bun, and had discovered a way to preserve lemons while standing in a farmhouse kitchen that was part of a farm and not a kitchen remodeling trend. Lemons were hard to get in dreamland, and in my current reality they seem to go bad within two days. They have become worse...
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I always thought I was going to be an astronomer. But failing physics and trigonometry in high school put me on a different path. It’s good I found an astronomer to marry, I thought again as I packed our car with chairs and blankets. It was the second night of the Perseid meteor shower, and Marc knew a perfect place to observe the meteors. Although the...
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