: lower black pain.

We’ve all made the speech. 80 percent of the time it’s made either in the shower or while we’re washing dishes. The speech itself isn’t the hard part. The true challenge is that fake surprised look; eyebrows slowly raised, eyes slowly darting left and right: What? Was…was that my name? Did they just call my name? Tom Hanks at the next table nodding, mouthing “ Yeah ! Go on! Get up there. Go !” You...

What’s your time signature? If you’re not familiar with the term you’ve probably seen a time signature; it’s those two numbers stacked on top of one another at the beginning of a piece of sheet music. The top number is the number of beats in a measure and the bottom is which length of note is counted as a full beat. 1234 The most common time signature is 4 / 4. That’s four beats and the highly rec...

It didn’t matter if my grandmother liked you or not. There’d be a big hello, and then she’d offer you a tin of cookies and ask you all about yourself. But as you’d try to tell her she’d make positive sounds like “uh, huh” and “ok” in an increasing amount, until she’d overlap you talking. Then you’d stop talking. And then she’d offer you more cookies. You wouldn’t take more cookies, not because you...

Remember your first crayon box? 12 colors was enough for the sky and the ground and the house and the grass and then you got the 24 pack with the two levels of crayons cause they had that little cardboard step inside the box and then you could really go to town on the cat and the dog and the cars and the people but then you went to a kid’s house that had the mega box of 64 with the sharpener on th...

What does love sound like? Yes, it is the middle of February, the time such questions sound particularly twee, but I’m asking in a literal sense. What does love sound like? This ballet project is quite humbling. Scoring or arranging a piece of music for orchestra isn’t like writing a piece of music at all. I know how the music goes, but now I’m figuring out what it sounds like. It’s the difference...

I started writing this column after my daughter’s keen criticism of the entertainment lineup I presented last year during Black History Month. I’d arranged a home film festival, with entries chosen to be delightful yet impactful from over 100 years of African American cinema. This greatly wearied her; there was too much black and white, as many of the films and clips were classic monochrome, but a...

I very recently started a new job, at an actual building that I actually go to everyday with my actual human body. Now every morning I walk my daughter to school (surreptitiously, as not to embarrass her) then continue three blocks to the subway. Been a bit of time since I’ve done this sort of thing, so my capacity for public interaction is not at all what once it was. Even though the walk is shor...

In grade school each year they’d take us to see something called a “Lollipop Concert”. We’d sit in the front rows of the hall that the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra played in while each musician introduced us to an instrument. Then they’d play a few pieces: “Peter and the Wolf” and some others, but the most important for me, the one they would always play, because I think we always went in the fa...

There’s a picture of me, as a kid, that I think really looks like me. If you care to argue that all pictures of us look like us, then I respectfully disagree. I have what has been commonly called a “high forehead”, high meaning “substantial” (or I think a better description might be “unavoidable”). I inherited this head from my grandfather, and the worst thing people used to say about it is “you m...

I expect previews at a movie, and liner notes inside album covers seem polite and informational and approachable on one’s own terms, but I don’t enjoy prefaces , on the whole. I feel they’re somewhat jarring. There is a legitimacy to the preface which I never feel comfortable ignoring, because someone read this book before I did and they aren’t merely offering a critique but a fully developed anal...

Well, here we goBut not “again” Nothing ever happens twiceIt’s never “last Thursday”Even if this Thursday feels “ just like last Thursday ”We never take the same train to workOr eat the same thing, for lunch Earth, this moving spaceshipis never in the same place twice we hurtleever forward spinningoutwardlysomewhere over in that direction our very lives great wheels of cheese on rolling metaphoric...

I took Latin in 8th grade. Our school had it as a requirement. I loved it, it was like a secret code that unlocked all the Romance languages. I was even chosen to narrate a dramatization of “The Three Little Pigs” in Latin at a pep rally, and no, I was not mercilessly beat senseless by the football team because they also had to take Latin and the quarterback was playing the wolf. Tres porcus parvu...

I want to make perfectly clear that this it in no way Spider-Man’s fault. I’m saying that right up front. I know people that work at MARVEL, and I don’t want them to think I’m not grateful for absolutely everything. This was not Spider-Man’s fault. If anyone, it’s probably Joseph Shivers, who can’t be held directly responsible, but is not blameless. Mr. Joseph Shivers, in 1959, invented a thermopl...

Winter. After our eyes experience the blossoming of Spring, our skin the inescapable heat of Summer, and our noses and mouths the World Court punishable assault of Autumn’s pumpkin spice, our ears enjoy the soundtrack of Winter. The silence after a bout of snow, and at the other end, holiday music. Our official holiday playlist now stands at 4 days and 17 hours long. It has been refined every year...

While church was every Sunday, for a lot of the late half of the 1970’s my most consistent (though quasi) religious service happened on Friday nights around 7:58 PM, when at the end of their incredibly popular weekly television program, Donny and Marie Osmond would sing: May tomorrow be a perfect day May you find love and laughter along the way May God keep you in His tender care ’Til He brings us...

[A Quick Note : well, a couple, because this is a song : For any of you who don’t usually listen to accompanying audio, I humbly ask if you could make an exception and click the green arrow above. Enjoy your Thanksgiving, and thank you for your time!] As of tomorrow, I’m a princess From a small midwestern town Who works too much to think of love ’Til an awkward prince comes ‘round And whisks me of...

The apartment was clean last weekend. Well, weekend before last, actually - we’d done the floors and the bathrooms and the straightening and the dishes and the laundry, totally refreshed both cat boxes, worked all Saturday morning - and then did all the grocery shopping and still had time to watch a movie, after dinner, sitting in our clean apartment. Then, over the week, we completed another coup...

Deep within the science that is family dynamics , directly in between the cold wind of passive aggression and the warm sunrise of honest affection, there used to stand a casual apathy that we each carried with us to holiday functions, along with side dishes in Tupperware containers. This allowed us to observe, casually, as people we didn’t really know said things we didn’t really agree with, also...

There were no Ewok toys available in 1976, and you know why? Because they were from the third movie, it wasn’t time for them yet, we only had flashlights with color gels and plastic tubes attached and those wonderful little rushed to market figures. It wouldn’t have made sense, because you’d be ignoring the best part, the second part, the “I am your father” and “I love you - I know” and Yoda part!...

Here lies sit-ups:“25, every day”. I’ve been alive650 months so far. This never happened. It’s bizarre –I bought a mat,a book, an app… if I lie down,I take a nap. Simple fitness done half-hearted:Here lies sit-ups, never started. Here lies glutenCroissants. Guinness. When’d we last have that stuff in us? I remember Krispy Kremessweet fat filled cardiologic dreamsbut Twizzlers were my favorite trea...

Someday I’m going to have a holiday special. I used to think it would be cool if it was filmed someplace sunny, then broadcast when it was really cold outside, like Christmas from Tahiti , but I’m actually more partial to a classic studio route; elaborate set, comedy sketches, musical guests, extremely bad dancing. (This was actually one of my very first goals in life, along with writing a book an...

The world is terrifying, but I’m just not enjoying it as much as I used to. It used to be we’d have a good long stretch of sunshine clear blue skies with the birds all tweeting and kids playing outside in the yard and glasses of fresh cold lemonade and then BLAMMO!  Disease! Inflation! War! Disaster! Now it’s just terrifying all the time. It’s a given; I wake up every single day KNOWING it’s gonna...

Wizards, fairies, unicorns, and talking animals dominate children’s fantasy literature, but the Tall Tale, our All American domestic folklore of the Wild West, features strapping human beans like Johnny Appleseed, Pecos Bill, and Paul Bunyan. Included in this line-up is John Henry, the steel-drivin’ African-American railroad worker. Revered for his strength and character, John pits his skill at ha...

Learning: the wisdom of the past passed forward; a bit of a time machine where we study the actions that made something happen in order to make it happen again. We learn, and then use that knowledge to learn more, our brains like… sourdough starter. And we don’t invent the things we’re learning - they are what we call established knowledge , tried and true, often of deep import like driving, or th...

Maybe it’s me: I just think that if we’re gonna do a job, we should get paid for it. Teaching is absolutely the Most Noble Profession, and community service is a pillar of society, it’s just that… nobody asked any of us, and if they needed tutors they could have just asked for volunteers and we might have made time for it,  but instead they interrupt us right when we’re busy to help them identify...