By Mike

For my son on his 5th

Life isn’t always about chasing what you want. Sometimes life gives you more than you ever could have dreamed of had you kept yourself chained to your own delusions. Corny? True. In only 5 years, our son has taught us every step of the way to embrace the unexpected. A surprising but joyous pregnancy becomes a difficult and potentially dangerous pregnancy. An orderly, scheduled induction becomes a “this baby is coming and don’t anyone get in the way” overnight express train. A little brother so easily overshadowed by an exuberant sister becomes the wisest and most quietly brilliant sun in…

On Death and Resolution

A few months ago, I had what some might consider a health scare. I write that in the past tense, although for all intents and purposes it is still ongoing since the fundamental causes of my problem haven’t been found or treated. And yet, I am relatively healthy and don’t feel too bad at the…

Observations from a Series of Snowbound Days

We go through a lot of maple syrup All else being equal, my children’s default state is “fighting” Every morning, the fucking city plows another foot of snow onto the apron of my driveway and crushes my will to live Podcasts are more enjoyable while commuting We are filthy people There is, in fact, a limit to how much coffee I can drink Time, it turns out, is not the issue; it’s attention Everything that happens in The Shining makes much more sense to me now

Slap-Your-Mama Chicken Curry

Put the following into a food processor: Half a large onion 5 or 6 or 8 cloves of garlic 1 3-or-4-inch piece of ginger, peeled, roughly chopped 1 tsp ground coriander .5 tsp ground cumin .5 tsp black pepper a few shakes of turmeric about tsp of kosher salt .5 tsp ground cinnamon 4 or 5 small canned whole tomatoes (or whatever you get from a 14 oz drained can of whole peeled tomatoes) .5 cup of water Puree this until well combined and set it aside. For the rest of the dish, you’ll need: The other half of the onion…

The lesson.

It doesn’t matter how old you are. It doesn’t matter what other people tell you. If you can find some courage (in yourself) and some faith (in anything) and some perspective (it’s not that big a deal) and some kindness (always be the nicest person in the room) you can make things happen that will amaze people. This is what I’ve learned from my mother. Not just in the past month, but my whole life. There’s a reason my people pay attention to “Auntie Kay.”

Two Years

Two years ago today, this happened. And I don’t mean my son’s tooth coming in; of course, I mean that I first tweeted. What a weird two years. As I’ve become increasingly engaged with some kind of Twitter community, I’ve encountered: love, anger, births, deaths, proposals, breakups, people gone missing, people found. Warmth, filth, and everything in between. Competitiveness and apathy. Most of all, I’ve found laughter. Wait, what? Those things aren’t weird at all. They’re what life is made of, online or off. Turns out we aren’t really living all that differently because of Twitter, we’re just doing it…

Do bookstores matter?

For years—perhaps decades—my dad would walk to the flagship Kroch’s and Brentano’s store on South Wabash on Chicago, spending his lunch hour among the famously knowledgeable booksellers and the then-amazing array of inventory. I only remember being in that downtown store once or twice, but the mall Kroch’s and Brentano’s in the town where I grew up was a key setting in my childhood love of reading. We went to the mall almost every night. If I wasn’t scanning the skies for Soviet bombers or taping Top 40 songs off the boombox, I was likely one of three places: the…

Oh, God. Innovation? Really?

This morning I had to give a few-minute spiel to my entire company about innovation. Sigh all you want. Despite the fact that we’ve been conditioned to stop listening anytime anyone in khakis starts talking about things like this, there are people out there (and particularly people in my company) who need to hear that it’s okay to try new things. None of what I said was particularly ::cough!:: innovative or even terribly interesting. You can find a trillion other things that a trillion others have said better about innovation. But! But, all day long I’ve received (politically unnecessary) compliments…

Actually social media

I attended a little liberal arts college in Wisconsin, where we well-off kids were dipped into a fantasy island of hippie liberalism in the middle of a devastated post-industrial blue-collar town. We had to stick together or intoxicate ourselves out of our minds to keep the consensual reality held together, and generally it worked pretty well. I’ll assume there are plenty of inside jokes and camaraderie at your alma mater. But I had no idea what a funny little cult that Beloit College comprised until a few weeks ago, when someone created a wonderful variation on one of those horrible…