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Chapter 9: Tours and Tales While the twins were at school learning their ABCs (literally, for A, B, and C was all the first-graders learned on their first day, while the second-graders labored over their composition books, writing “What I Did on My Summer Vacation”—if they remembered any of the writing skills they had learned the previous year, and Father worked somewhere doing something in an office in the city, Mother was on the “Nickle tour of our humble concern,” as Mr.

Chapter 8: Mrs. Perdlow, Dwayne, and the Basement Mrs. Perdlow had the hardest row to hoe with the fifth- and sixth-graders, who had reached the point of starting to grow up and stop being children. Boys and girls alike were suddenly less interested in learning to read, write, and do arithmetic, and more interested in learning about one another. Mrs. Perdlow was a stern, no-nonsense, old-school, spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child teacher who took no guff from her students, an

Chapter 7: Which Right? As students walked into Mr. Leslie’s classroom, he was busily writing words on the chalkboard. “First graders on the right, second graders on the left,” he said without looking away from the board. Some of the students had already taken their seats, while others stood, deciding where to sit and looking confused. Jimmy Readly, a red-headed boy wearing a striped pullover and faded dungarees, looked around and said, “Um, Mr. Leslie?” Mr. Leslie con

Chapter 6, Part 2: First Daze Meanwhile, 10 miles away at the Woolen Mill in town, Marjorie parked the Checker in the lot and opened the door to find a security guard standing beside it. “Cabs parking in the service lot,” he said authoritatively. “Oh! This isn’t a taxi. It’s my car. I start here today.” Marjorie held out her hand, but the guard ignored it. “It looks like a cab.” “It was, but now it’s my car,” Marjorie said, smiling. “You said you’re starting here today?

Chapter 6, Part 1: First Daze August 15th 1955, was a day of firsts. First day of schools for the twins, first day of work for Mother, and the first time the twins had something other than bananas and juice for breakfast. Everyone but Mother was surprised to find eggs, bacon, and toast on their plates. Father and Mother had coffee, and Theodor and Eleanor had juice. Mother smiled as she looked around the table, excited for what she was sure would be an exciting day for all

Snot Girl and Booger Boy started back in the mid-1990s when my friend Tony Doolin and I were coming up with ideas for some animated series we were shopping to Nickelodeon and MTV networks. We had a pretty good reception, had an agent, and took meetings with Nickelodeon in New York and Klasky Csupo (the studio behind Rugrats, Duckman, and Tracy Ullman Show-era The Simpsons). We even won a screenwriting award at the International Animation Festival. Fast forward 30 years, and l

Chapter 5: Two Dollars! One Friday in August, Mother gave each of the now six-year-old twins a banana and juice for their morning meal (Theodore and Eleanor never had “breakfast” because that was eggs and bacon, coffee and toast, and was apparently only for Father because Mother only had coffee), and Mother told them to finish up because they needed to go school shopping. The twins looked at one another, wondering what Mother meant. Of course, they knew about school, and th

Chapter 4: The Discussion Time passed, and the twins got a little older. Doctor Billit’s pills did little to affect Eleanor’s snottiness or Theodore’s boogeriness, and the combined nasal emissions of both twins combined with the overwhelming use of tissues, towels, and cleaning products began to be a frequent subject of conversation between Robert and Marjorie. “Did you know that we are spending more money on tissues, towels, and cleaning products than we are on food?” said

Chapter 3: Nosing Around Because Eleanor was visibly worse off than Theodore, Doctor Billit lifted her to the exam table while Marjorie and Theodore sat in the two chairs against the wall of the room. “Now, let’s take a look,” smiled the doctor reassuringly as he picked up his nasal speculum. At which point Eleanor barked a resounding sneeze that sprayed Doctor Billit, the exam room, her mother, Theodore, and very possibly the receptionist in the other room with a thick l

Chapter 2: The Snot Awakens One Spring, when Theodore and Eleanor were three or four years old, they started to sniff and snort, cough and sneeze, and become a bit sickly. Robert noticed the twins seemed a little less rowdy and a little more whiny, and, glancing over the top of his newspaper one evening, said to Marjorie, “Perhaps they should see a doctor.” Of course, what Theodore was really saying was, “Perhaps you should take them to a doctor.” Marjorie glanced up from

Chapter 1: Twins Theodore (not Theo or Ted or Teddy—his parents frowned on shortened names) and his twin sister Eleanor (not Ellen or Elie or Elle—again, the frowning) were in the den coloring when Father (not Dad or Daddy or Pa) came home from work, and Mother (you get the picture) called them to dinner. Theodore and Eleanor, though twins, looked nothing alike and in no way resembled either of their parents. They knew this (because, duh, mirrors) and because, on the rare o

Happy Birthday, U.S.A. I had planned a big blog post to celebrate America's 250th Independence Day, but I just wasn't feeling it. I'm depressed, more depressed than I have been in a while, and it isn't the kind of depression my meds can alleviate. For most of my life, I took our country--our way of life--for granted. I was taught in school that the United States of America was the greatest and wealthiest nation in the world. We were the aspiration of most of the world. The pe

Living in catacombs, the darkness breathes I don’t need you. If you could see me, you could see that I don’t care. These bones surround me. These crumbling ruins have memories that stink like rage. A tower of babble, a pedestal I built for you to stand. I’d knock you off it if I could find a way. I know what you said, I heard every lie, pretending not to hear. My praying hands closed over tattooed stigmata. God has never bent to listen. My prayer unanswered, no miracle mi

In the morning, there are dogs barking from kennels far away, an occasional rooster crowing, and maybe a far-off peacock. Dreamsicle, “our” feral cat, waits in the middle of the backyard, sometimes looking like a dead fuzzy wad of orange and white fur, sometimes standing alert and staring at our back door. Dreamy is usually there between 6:30 and 8. If we’re any later filling his dish with crunchies and dropping a handful of treats beside the bowl, we may not see him at all.

Louis Miller sat on a log and watched the world float by When he saw the body floating in the river he thought it was a log But the log had a face and it once had thoughts and it once loved Louis Miller Janey O'Malley took down a dress from its place in the cedar closet When she put it on she looked in the mirror and saw her mother there But her mother had died and she once looked like Janey and she once loved Louis Miller Louis Miller was a married man A bum, a saint, a

AI can do a lot of good. It strengthens healthcare by detecting diseases earlier, automating routine clinical tasks, predicting patient risks, accelerating drug discovery, and assisting surgeons with precise robotic tools. It boosts productivity by speeding up writing, coding, customer support, and everyday office tasks, raising output across industries. AI expands accessibility through real‑time translation, speech‑to‑text, adaptive voice controls, automatic alt text, and to

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was all-in on cyberpunk. Neuromancer, Snow Crash, Blade Runner. The grungy, computerized, miraculous future of brainjacking, lightcycles, and 7-11 snack Faxes. All fantasy, but, in my mind, possible. Of course, I didn’t expect any of those exciting things to be real in my lifetime. But here in 2026, we’re closer to some of them than 30-year-old me would ever have thought possible: Companies like Neuralink, Blackrock Microsystems, Medtroni

Part I: The Horse Artificial intelligence (AI) is technology that lets machines mimic how humans learn, understand, solve problems, make decisions, and create. AI-powered apps and devices can recognize what they see, understand, and respond to human language, learn from new data, give detailed recommendations, and even act on their own — like a self‑driving car. Full disclosure, I use AI. Sometimes Google Gemini or Venice.ai to generate the images I use in My Mind and Welc

Crushes There was a girl back home whom I was truly, deeply, madly in love with, as in love as any boy who had never been in love could be. We had both dated others, were never exclusive, and, looking back, were probably—really—just the absolute best of friends—but that read as love to me. I still have that glow in my heart. That said, college was a revelation. Here was a literal surfeit of NEW girls. Women! Women I had not spent most of 12 years being acquainted with in on

Author's Note: It's been a busy week, so I kind of half-assed this installment. Sorry, not sorry. Pledging continued, and a few guys who didn’t go through the official rush joined during open rush a couple of weeks later. Those of us who were freshmen settled into a new post-high school reality. For most of us, it was the first time we were away from home for an extended period. No parents, no siblings, no pets. Our accustomed safety nets were suddenly anything from a quic