In the early 1990s I worked for a foster care agency in New York City. It was my job as a “homefinder” to interview potential foster parents and assess whether they could provide a nurturing home for traumatized children. The work was an intimate education in human nature, from its most generous to its most sordid, but from a quarter-century’s distance one couple stands at the forefront of my memory. Continue reading
As a child I felt the call of the wild. Jack London’s book sat on my bedroom bookshelf and every so often I would take and read. Or rather, I would drink it in, as I did all of my favorite books, living moment by moment Buck’s eerie transformation from favored pet in sunny Santa Clara to wolf fiend of the Arctic. Why did I love the tale? Its cruelty held no charms for me, but its stark beauty captivated me.
One day my friends and I found a small, hurt animal – mouse, bird, I no longer remember what. When one girl wanted to rescue it I spoke frostily of the law of club and fang until she protested, “Well . . . jeepers!” That gentle “jeepers” sank its fangs into my soul. Why would a Christian girl love The Call of the Wild? I decided I had overdosed on wolfish creatures (“They were savages, all of them . . . ”) and read London no more.
This past Christmastide I heard an NPR review of Alejandro Iñárritu’s The Revenant and knew that I had to see it. I had a professional motive, besides. As a history professor specializing in the early nineteenth century, I did not want to be mauled by a student who had seen this film when I had not. So, one fine Friday before the spring semester hit, I took myself to see The Revenant. Continue reading
There is a street I pass on my daily commute called Tanglewilde. I’ve never driven down it, but the name pretty well describes my home life for the past half-year.
Things got dicey on Memorial Day when the rain came down in such torrents that the street in front of my house became a river. Around midnight I noticed a shallow puddle spreading across my living room floor from under the baseboard. I stayed up most of the night, sponge in hand, defending my house from water intrusion. I thanked my lucky stars that I had decided to purchase flood insurance the previous summer. Continue reading
God help me! I have to learn how to teach a college course online. It’s a whole new venture for a professor of a certain age. Oh, but I have an idea: I’ll create an audiovisual recording of myself to introduce each new topic and another one to wrap it all up at the end. But there’s an obstacle – I’m a little camera-shy. Continue reading
