My stepdaughter left Philly under a cloak of darkness. A year + change of her college experience had rendered her lost and confused. Is that why grown-ups are going to prison on behalf of their kids? Have we lost sight of what education is really all about? My siblings and the lion’s share of my
My boys are gone! Shipped off to Ithaca and University of Vermont, leaving me alone in my Brooklyn apartment on a late-August night, with my thoughts, a whisky and a plate of steak tartare. I dropped Ben yesterday for his senior year – a fact that I am yet to fathom. He was a camp
These days when we talk about bravery, it often involves a mass shooting and first responders. The hero who flung himself on a gunman in a North Carolina classroom last week saved lives. I asked myself, would I have had the courage to do that? In the same newscycle, a young man named Matthew Easton
Just over 21 years ago, in an extraordinary flash of reproductive coincidence, my best friend and I bore witness to our respective wives giving birth to two children, 200 miles and a mere few hours apart. I realize this sounds a little like the beginning of a very cheesy (or brilliant!) novel, but in fact
Ohio State. Cornell. Tufts. SUNY New Paltz. RISD. U. of Michigan. Penn State. R.I.T. Madison. Maryland. SUNY Albany. Champaign. Tulane. Burlington, VT. Dartmouth. Temple. UIC. USC. New England Conservatory of Music. From Boston to L.A., upstate New York to New Orleans, our four kids considered enough colleges to keep us on the road for four
The day I graduated Middlebury College, my father gave me $1,500 to buy a new used car and this piece of advice. “You can pursue writing, but always be sure to have a real job first.” The Datsun hatchback I bought nearly didn’t get me to film school in L.A. The advice has stuck with
I’m not sure how people “make it” in the arts. I’ve been an artist all my life, not to mention a musician, carpenter, stair-builder, laborer, landscaper, cab driver, security guard, short order cook, waiter, bus boy, dishwasher, and parent to two teenagers. Pretty much everything I know in life I’ve picked up by trial and
We are the generation that is never going to age. We are trekking through Thailand for our fiftieth and helicopter skiing and learning to cook in a yurt on the Tibetan plain. Our parents bestowed us with education and confidence and this unwavering belief that the world is our oyster, merely there for the taking.
