Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

Among the muck, the parka-wearing, the shivering under layers (the real cardio of winter), the pains in every limb and joint, the inability to breathe . . . among all that, not long ago, I fond myself at a private reception at The Met.  Okay, so it's no secret that I've long held The Met as a favorite, on sunny days, on the other side of the moon, when I have a day with nothing to do and no deadlines I'll spend a carefree day there.  Or, I'll just spend a few hours there when I can't stand the fight anymore.  Come to think of it; I should be there now. To dream, as we say. Back to that reception, which sounds swankier than it is . . . Professors got a night, for free, replete with free cocktails at the end.  I mean, seriously, people.  Who in her right mind would turn down free booze AND art? Not I, that is certain.  So, a friend from grad school and I met up and let ourselves into The Met, and then we spotted for which walks and talks to atte...

A few years ago I wrote a mini blog series to in coming freshmen . . . It was September.  Very true.  Very pertinent. Part one .  Part two . Now, as January turns to a bitter, icy grey and colleges reopen a different form of "that time of year" is back.  The spring semester, or also known as "the graduating semester." Le sigh.  Read on, you'll see why. Girls, boys, men, and women come into my office in various stages of fright.  They arrive in my inbox, and the appear in Skype and Facetime meetings, and in classes they teeter on the edges of chair gasping for breath.  Panics about jobs, getting them, getting into grad school, making money...Always the money comes up.  Yea, there's a bit of angsty haze this time of year.  Some good, some . . . well, a few emails this week struck me more than normal.  Amid the "Aw snap, I forgot," "What's going down up in here?" "and "You gots to help me" with arms flailed in the air ...

There are a few things about me that ponder and amuse my friends.  My being a Yankees fan, an adulterated one at that, is one such point.  Ions ago my Grandmother and her sister would watch Cubs games, as they lived in Hammond, IN.  Cubbies fans pretty much describes that side of the family.  None-the-less, back in the '80s the Yankees sucked and you didn't have the glory of the internet to make them easily accessible.  Then in college there was the 1996 World Series.  Any baseball fan knows the story of how the Yanks won the first title since 1978.  Those same fans know the story of Jorge, Pettitte, Mo, and Jeter.  I won't bore you with the history of the core four.  What I will tell you is that in many ways watching the four of them fade from the game in various stages of retirement makes me wrestle with my own memories. In 1996 I was a junior at Kentucky Wesleyan College.  Imagine being a Yankees fan in Kentucky? I was.  I ...