Category: Philly

I was recently re-reading the ca. 4th-century BC collection of advice and admonitions attributed to the Chinese philosopher Mencius. When I came across the following famous passage, parenthood made me see it in a new light: You must not be like the man from Sung. There was a man from Sung who pulled at his… Continue reading The proper care of seedlings

I’m sitting in my tiny living room in Philly, listening to songs from Hazel, and Portland band I was a fan of back in those hazy days of the late 1990s. The iPod shuffled up a tune of theirs and I had to go back and play through all their albums. One of the many… Continue reading Hazel, where are you?

The New York Times this evening features a story on luck, and scientists wondering why people still envision themselves in an “unseen universe of small rituals,” which involve “large questions of morality, community and history.” There is a hardware store a few blocks from our house. I went there the other day in order to… Continue reading Do you believe in magic?

Now that I’ve left graduate school and am just a regular old working stiff, I am a commuter again. It’s a strange life. I spend about a half hour five mornings a week with many of the same people. We wait together at the trolley and subway stops. We sit and stand together as the… Continue reading Commuting

Snippets of conversation I overheard on the way home from work the other day: A young woman dressed in black pants and black t-shirt was talking on her cell phone. She said “It’s just that I worry about the transmission… the transmission of certain viruses, you know?” Her tone of voice rose at the word… Continue reading Overheard