Kindergarten Card

The other night, I caught a glimpse of an American Express commercial on TV. All I saw were the words “Kindergarten Card” flashed on my screen, and I had to do subsequent research to find out what the point of the ad actually was. Evidently, it’s meant to appeal to small-business owners who want to [...]

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Touching Moments on the Light Rail

I work in downtown Baltimore. After one month of driving to work, paying for parking, and coming a lot closer to understanding people who wield weapons in a fit of road rage, I started taking the light rail to work. Taking public transportation has a lot of advantages: primarily, while it still takes me 20-40 [...]

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Patriot Day

I realize this should have been posted a couple of days ago, but I needed some time to mull it all over.
My calendar notes that today is Patriot Day. This is news to me. After some research, I’ve discovered that September 11th was designated Patriot Day by Congress in the months following the attacks, and [...]

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A Family Thing

I was back in Ohio this weekend for my parents’ Labor Day Weekend party. It was a smaller crowd this year than usual, and the stragglers moved inside earlier than usual. A group of seven of us hung around the basement bar built by orphans (yeah, my parents have an interesting house history), listening to [...]

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Small-town charm

I was back in Ohio this weekend for my parents’ Labor Day party. I grew up in a town of about 25,000 in north central Ohio. Sure, it’s the cosmopolitan center of the county and all the Amish and Mennonite in the area have big days at our Wal-Mart, but it’s no Youngstown or Akron [...]

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