A Letter from 2009
Thursday 26 February 2009 Dear Blair, Sorry it has taken so long to respond to your simple question—but as you are a teacher, I can probably count on your understanding. You wrote: “From everything you’ve…
Category: Friends
The Next Time I Go to Latin America by Amy Nuismer
From my archives– 3.14.2012 Amy and I wrote in our notebooks the other night at Hartford Coffee. Here’s one of the pieces she penned… The Next Time I Go to Latin America It Will…
How To Generate/Instigate Community
Invite 4 people over for a potluck and movie; I recommend Branagh’s Belfast. Do a regular Zoom with 2 or 3 of your best SLU friends, say every quarter, with or without certain topics, questions…
Dear Barista
There’s a scene in Woody Allen’s movie, Stardust Memories, where Martians come to earth, and Woody Allen’s character, Sandy Bates, seeks their wisdom about the meaning of life, and he has this exchange with them:…
Dear Anya
Thank you for your cool list of queries which I saw after I got back from vacation at Blue-Eye, Missouri! I will start with an easy one: “Favorite Book”— The Brothers Karamazovby Fyodor Dostoevskyas translated by…
Share the Wealth with Katrina Becker and Jonna Caraccio: The Glories of Friendship
While many of us are all too happy to leave our awkward high school selves firmly in the past, every once in a while we come across parts of that life experience we’re grateful to…
Share the Wealth with Cami Kasmerchak: The Good Grief Project
There is a quote from one of my favorite poets, Buddy Wakefield, that I sometimes mis-remember. My version of his words has to do with creating safe passage through our minds, which, in my opinion,…
Share the Wealth with Cami Kasmerchak: The good grief project
Grief can be a lonely experience, but it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes we don’t talk about grief because it makes us uncomfortable or we don’t know what to say. The good grief project was…
Be In Love with This Life: A Class with Cami Kasmerchak and Mark Chmiel
One September evening, a group of Weston students walked past a disfigured man in a wheel-chair begging outside the school. No one said hello or even acknowledged him, which prompted Gene later to ask aloud…