Tiny Memoir: Random Things About my Dad

Like most of you, I have a father. He’s been dead for a while. None of that covers the important bits.

Tiny Memoir: What if Doctors were Interested in Science

I have always been interested in science. At one time, I thought I wanted to be a doctor. I didn’t. That is to say, I didn’t become a doctor. I’m not sure if that’s because I didn’t want to be one or that I got distracted along the way.

Five-Year Plan: Not So Little Things

I am waiting on the buyer to get her bank stuff straightened out, so she can buy our RV. This may seem like a very small thing (and you would be correct), but it is just one thing among way too many. When I started this five-year plan to become location independent (or house-free as we like to call it), I thought I had a very good plan. In retrospect, it was a very good plan; it just didn’t cover all the details…

Death is Only Real for the Living

Dana-Faber Cancer Center, Boston — Yawkey Cancer Center. People move through the building like those in an office. Check-in. Wave at the guards directing us to windows. “Name? Birthday? Do you have a port?” Get a sticker and a fresh mask. Move along…

The Journey is its Own Event

I just finished reading Journeys Are Happiness in Motion By Jack Road. He writes a lot about the act of traveling, how it is more than going from point A to point B. If it is not going from one place to another, what is it?

There’s a storm brewing, but I’m not sure which one.

It’s a Saturday evening in August. I’m on a road trip and currently in Wisconsin. Back at the homestead (aka our raised ranch in Connecticut) there is a storm brewing. Really it’s brewing out in the Atlantic and, if I have any say, it can just stop brewing at any time…

When a 5-year plan has 1 year left

In 2017, I made a five-year plan. I was living in Connecticut with 4 kids, 2 partners, 1 dog, and 2 cats. I made the plan with my partners. In five years, Jeanne would retire from her job with the state, Zoë and I would reduce our involvement with our business, and we would travel the world. Just like that. It was a plan.

Of course, that was all 5 years away…

You Shouldn’t be a Traveling Family

Almost everyone has someone who has told them “Get your traveling in now because you won’t be able to once you have kids.” or “You can’t build a life on the road, especially with kids.” It seems there tons of reasons why it’s impractical if not impossible to make traveling the default setting whether you have a home base or not. The reasons change depending on the ages of your children (and sometimes on the ages of your parents), but the message is always the same that somehow you are doing a disservice to your family if you choose a traveling lifestyle…

Tourists, Travelers, and Authenticity

I grew up in New York City. I just typed that as NYC, but then realized that that was shorthand. It is a shorthand that many people know, but it is not a shorthand that New Yorkers use. It is a way of expressing Manhattan. Actually, most people visualize Times Square or generic skyscrapers when they use the phrase NYC. They are definitely not talking about the Outer Boroughs. That’s where I grew up. If I wanted to talk about Manhattan, I would say “the City” as in, “I’m going to the City with Dad when he goes to get his paycheck.” My father worked for The Daily News at a time when direct deposit wasn’t a thing. I loved going with him on his day off to get his paycheck. I had the run of the Daily News Building, and after he got his check and cashed it, we’d sometimes go to the Horn & Hardart for a sandwich. That was an authentic New York experience!

Actually, that was my authentic New York experience. It’s not one a tourist could replicate, even if they had a time machine and could travel back to the 1970s…

No Judgement, Seriously

Even though you may not consciously realize it, you are judging this sentence and the website on which you are reading it. In fact, you are, consciously or not, judging everything you encounter every day. That’s not a bad thing. After all, our survival depends on how well we can size up situations and respond to them.

Judging and responding, however, are different from being judgmental and reacting. These may seem like small semantic differences, but, actually, there is a world of difference between each of these things…

Travel: A few fears and facts

Sometimes, the thought of traveling is thrilling! You can’t wait to go someplace new. You plan the trip. You revel in the details. You lie awake thinking about it. Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, a bit of dread creeps in. You start thinking about what could go wrong — what could go horribly wrong. You try to focus on the joy of the trip. You reach for the anticipation and joy that you had when you first embarked on the idea of travel, but the fear has taken hold.

This is not necessarily the fear of traveling (hodophobia). Sometimes it is…

A sub-set of details about me

There’s a lot to be said for not remembering details. I was 19 still nominally living in my parent’s house. I spent as many nights as I could “else place” as my middle son calls any place which isn’t here. In fact, on many occasions I let my mind drift else place while I moved the daily-ness of life. I wasn’t without direction or purpose. I worked at a number of jobs, went to college, and participated in social justice movements: Feminism, pacifism, the anti-nuclear movement. I marched. I talked. I trained people in non-violent civil disobedience. I hung out with folks in GLYNY (Gay and Lesbian Youth of NY). I hung at the library. I hung out in the Natural History Museum. I hung at at the Door (located on 6th Ave in Manhattan it provided, meals, medical care, and a place for teenagers to be together and be out of the cold – physically and metaphorically).

I also walked, a lot…