Everyone wants to know about my sponsored swim in the Hudson on Saturday and it’s coming—I promise—but what’s more on my mind is the ambulance ride and the emergency room visit that came the night before: About ten o’clock on Friday, Isabella is in bed asleep and a funny noise comes from her and I pick her up and […]
Personal and General Writing
I killed a pigeon
The other week, when I was riding my bike to the South Bronx to go canoing in the polluted Bronx River with kids from Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice (see here), an old man was feeding pigeons right in the middle of the bike path. I was running late and worried about time and […]
Where the deeply personal meets the political
This morning I woke up and did the laundry in the bathroom sink and then asked my two-year-old, Isabella, and my wife, Michelle, if they wanted toast. They both said no. Assuming Michelle could gauge the truth for herself, I made only enough for me and Isabella. Then Michelle changed her mind and started eating toast I’d earmarked for Isabella. […]
To give or not to give
Once you start questioning the fabric or your life—as we have had to for the No Impact Man project—the inquiry never ends. You find yourself examining all your living assumptions, in this case, whether or not to give money to homeless people—street charity. For many years, my answer to this question was no. But I’ve changed. Why? As it […]
Too bad about the fireflies
One of my most avid readers is, well, my mom. Since I’ve never quite been the best at staying in touch, she tells me that, because of the blog, she feels closer to me than she has in years (love you, mom). Needless to say, the post she liked the most was the one about entertaining my […]
What am I for?
There are some big questions that used to keep me up at night when I was a kid, before I made the mistake of learning how to ignore them. Why was I born? Where is it that I’m hurrying to before I die? What is the thing in this life that has true value? Does anything endure? […]
Entertaining Isabella—Update
Since we have no mains electricity as part of the No Impact experiment, we also have no TV. Last week, someone asked me how we entertain Isabella without one. In the comments to that post, someone said that they like to take their kids hunting for fireflies. Coincidentally, that day, my friend Mayer, whose community garden plot I help […]
Entertaining Isabella without TV
A reader named Chrissy wrote to me and asked how we entertain Isabella without TV or video games: We build towers from a set of wooden blocks and laugh our heads off when the towers fall down. Towards bedtime, we sit on the couch and listen to classical music on the crank-up radio and try to hum along. […]