Do the Yak

As a former reporter, my name has been in the paper lots of times above the articles I wrote, but this may be the first time I've been at least partially the subject of an article, or in this case a graphic artist's layout. (OK, the second time, but I'll get back to that.) The graphic artist in question, Greg Williams, found my post on spam poetry a while back and e-mailed to ask if he could use it in a page design he was doing for the Tampa Tribune. I said sure, and here's the result . Greg also does Wikiworld , a feature on Wikipedia where he uses his talents to illustrate random entries in that vast online encyclopedia. The first time my name got into a paper that wasn't my employer was in a Dave Barry column, believe it or not. It had to do with an article I sent him (yes, I was identified as an "alert reader"!) about little flexible robots that engineers were designing to, um, use the basement entrance to explore one's colon from the inside and i...

The Red Sox just got swept in Toronto. Their 14.5 game lead of late May over the Yankees is down to one and a half games. New York, of course, swept Baltimore and has won 12 of their last 14, including two out of three against the Sox last weekend. That series included a nasty 8-7 loss on Friday, courtesy of flameouts by Okajima and Papelbon, who between them gave up six runs in the 8th; a satisfying 10-1 stomping at Beckett's hands on Saturday; and an excellent game with the wrong outcome – a pitcher's duel on Sunday between Schilling and Clemens culminating in a 4-3 loss after Schill gave up a three-run homer to Jeter in the 8th. In the Toronto series they just plain sucked. The Sox scored all of four runs in the three games. Meanwhile, there was another horrific outing from Gagne, who was brought in on Tuesday to protect a 2-1 lead in the 8th but coughed up three runs, and another collapse by Papelbon, who likewise entered the 8th in Wednesday's game with a 2-1 lead and ...

This is the second week of our new morning routine – waiting for the bus with the kids, waving goodbye to them through the windows, driving through leafy suburbia to the train station, and taking a commuter train and then the subway to work. I really like it. I like not having the hassle of bucking the kids into the car, driving them to two different schools, trying to find parking, etc. And I really like not having to then drive another 30-40 minutes through rush hour traffic to get to work. Even though my commute doesn't really save any time over driving, the mental health benefits are huge. I don't have to be constantly alert for lights turning yellow, other drivers doing something stupid, or a sudden burst of annoying music or blah-blah on the radio. I can now sit on an extremely quiet train, sip coffee and read or listen to my iPod. The time passes quickly... it's almost soothing. This morning it was kind of chilly (low 40s) so I can see where waiting for the train wit...

To me, this is the most haunting and horrible part of 9/11 -- the people above the floors where the planes hit, unable to escape , forced by heat and smoke into a desperate decision . None of them survived. Many of other images from that day – including the the planes hitting ( American 11 and, 17 minutes later, United 175 ) – still seem surreal, perhaps even more so six years later. I can't help looking again at these pictures , reading the timeline and pondering the statistics . I even found this video and watched it, though it's labeled "graphic" and I suspect a lot people would refuse to do so if given the chance, just as many Americans were outraged by the publication of this famous photo of an unidentified man falling – a photo that doesn't identify the subject or show any grisly details of injury or death. Why are people upset at seeing an image of a real person about to die (and die with some dignity resulting from their conscious decision, one might ...

I got a little ahead of myself yesterday in discussing the first day of school without recounting the previous week, when I took vacation time but didn't actually go anywhere -- a first in my adult life. We were thinking of gong to Jersey, but Ben's father and stepmother visited us over the first weekend to see the new house, so it seemed redundant to follow them back down to their place and risk driving back on Labor Day weekend. So we just hung out. Fortunately the weather cooperated -- it was sunny all week (and in fact, all month). We didn't sit at home the whole time, though. One day we went to Horseneck Beach, which was fabulous. The water was warm enough to swim in for extended periods, which is why I opted for a beach south of the Cape rather than Crane Beach in Ipswich -- nice dunes but freezing water and it costs and arm and a leg to park. Anyway, the water was great, with little waves just the right size, quality sand for castles, and a snack bar so we could mun...

Memmmm-'ries... like the corners of my school... when we started kindergarten... in the leafy 'burbs... That's my lame segue into saying that Becky started kindergarten today and Sarah started second grade, both at the same school I attended. A lot has changed, of course -- buildings have been renovated and repurposed, and all the teachers I had are probably dead of old age or pretty close to it. There is now a preschool and an after-school program, ID cards for the teachers and bus passes for the kids, fences around the playgrounds, no more seesaws (fractured cervical vertebrae, anyone?), and even air conditioning in some places. And of course everything has shrunk. But every so often I see something specific that's exactly the same, like a concrete bench or a climbing structure that's survived on one of the playgrounds. Then there are times that seeing something recalls a memory of a specific incident. For example, seeing the strip of classrooms next to the parkin...