I understand November is National Gratitude Month. I’m not one for gratitudes, at least I don’t think of them that way....

We all have out rituals, both communal and individual. With our annual “changing of the clocks” each November, I partake in my autumnal “changing of the socks” formality. I’ve made my life easy. I wear mainly black socks. If I lose one, there are many others to take its place (as long as I continue to have only two feet). And I don’t have to go hunting for that “other” each morning. Cotton in the summer and Smartwool socks in the winter. Yesterday, I rotated my socks. My wool ones went into my sock drawer and my cotton went into a drawer...

It's been a while since I wrote a blog post: five years, in fact. Social media took over. But now that I've just redone my website, I thought I'd start posting periodic missives. A lot has happened since I last dropped a blog post. My daughters are now out of college, and I've retired from the Smithsonian. Oh yeah, the pandemic. COVID or no, I'd still be sitting in front of my computer working on posters and writing. Sometimes I find myself sitting here seven days a week. How'd I get it all done when I had a job? Should you...

Growing up, my family's grocery shopping was always a major event, something I was forced to endure on a weekly basis. Every Saturday morning my father would comb the newspaper ads for specials. Like the true engineer he was, he mapped his shopping trajectory based on which stores had what deals. We spent the better part of our Saturday going from one market to the next --often four or more. I pushed the cart while he consulted his list. This was not quality father-son time. With a childhood like that, my grocery shopping has morphed into something less time-consuming. And, my...

After the football game my wife and I took our older daughter out to dinner as we usually do on these Saturday evenings. A celebratory meal, certainly not for the prowess of our team, these after-game dinners reinforce the connections we have with our very independent children. With one in college and the other soon to be, we hardly ever see them. We are pre-empty nesters trying to get the hang of our new reality. This time, our younger daughter was entertaining friends at home. We decided on Ethiopian. After dinner, we headed back to the dorm. As we inched our...