Hippo

The hippo emits a reddish fluid that led some people to think hippos sweat blood.  They do not.  The reddish substance is a sort of sunscreen for the delicate skin of the hippo.  Hippos don’t sweat.  They get in the water. What I like more about hippos is that I understood their name early in […]

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Game Off

The storm was a media darling, as all storms are.  This one got a week’s press.  It looked like a reliable snow day to me.  It is. My traditional snow day debauchery is postponed because it is actually that bad.  People have driven up my street.  Not people in Miatas. I’ve been clicking through job […]

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Families

Yesterday was the last day of holy carnival.  Today is the beginning of keeping, as directed, “a holy Lent.”  These two families, Mardi Gras family and church family, pull me in two directions in a way that is familiar.  For many years, I had a mom and a dad who did not get along. Mardi […]

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How To

Weekly Reader, 3, 2, 1 Contact, a Highlights for Children in the pediatrician’s waiting room.  But I preferred grownup magazines: Reader’s Digest, which I scrutinized in the basement hallway, waiting for my mother’s piano lesson to end, and mine to begin.  All those tiles with all those swiss cheese holes.  And a million Reader’s Digests. […]

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