Having friends of mixed ages is valuable for so many reasons. It keeps you tuned in to cultural references that would be lost to you if you never left your age ghetto, for one. For another, it invites you to reflect on where things stood in your life at various points on the age continuum. That’s the one I’ll be focusing on here. We recently invited two delightful people to dinner. L. had been...

The other night I had a school dream different from the usual anxiety-laden ones – you know, naked to class, forgot to prepare the lesson. It was unusual not just because of its content but because I actually remembered it on waking. My dream memories are more like snapshots than videos, so you have to imagine the context and actions that surrounded the picture. I am in my classroom with my...

One of our former trainer’s favorite expressions is “Motion is Lotion.” There hasn’t been much outdoor motion lately, with the temperatures hovering around the single digits and lower for almost a week now. So, I’m particularly grateful for the exercise regime our current trainer has constructed for me that saves me from becoming a complete winter couch potato. Amy was here for her weekly...

Both Rosellen and I consider Ernst Borinski one of our most significant mentors. I’m not sure if I’ve written about him before in these 300 postings but he surely deserves his own dedicated space in my blog. He’s on my mind for a particular reason today, which I’ll get to in a moment after I give you the short version of Ernst’s story. Ernst was the chairman of the sociology department at...

Historians of Freedom Summer (1964) have noted that a significant number of the participating volunteers were Jewish. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the liberal leanings of the Jewish community and a historical, though sometimes troubled affinity between Blacks and Jews. I’m guessing many of those young Jews were not regular synagogue attenders. They may even have been surprised to...