Bespoke

Arts & Culture

  • Dancing Around the Costume Chest

    Back in the days when my kids believed in Santa and my words had the force and weight to either bless them or crush them, our daughters and son indulged in make-believe, dressing up to become the character of their… Continue reading

  • Flashes of Wonder

    If I wrote like my wife talks, I’d write narrative like a kid writing home from summer camp, “I had oatmeal for breakfast and we played softball and I outran all the boys in a foot race and we had… Continue reading

  • Whenever I See Your Smiling Face

    Jenna and Lauren express Duchenne smiles while framing my nephew David sporting a retro-eighties mouth-only male smile James Taylor did not sing Whenever I see Your Smiling Face about professional athletes…unless of course he was referring to Phil Mickelson or… Continue reading

  • Stealing Back Cool from Kerouac

    I’ve always loved cool…have no idea what it is but I love it. Perhaps I have no idea because cool expresses not one meaning or attitude but many, a cross-pollinated adjective moving fluidly in many cultures and languages. An Anglo… Continue reading

  • There’s a tornado in my coffee

    My son is writing his undergraduate thesis for Honors Meteorology on the topic, The Genesis of Tornadoes. I was wondering if The Revelation of Tornadoes might be easier to write. Tornado prediction is a non-linear dart tossed into the misty… Continue reading

  • Mosquito Dancing in the Fire Hall

    My wife Karen was born in Trenton, New Jersey and spent most of her childhood in the small town of Tabernacle on the edge of the pine barrens about halfway between Philadelphia and Atlantic City. I first visited her home… Continue reading

  • My Favorite Movies

    My favorite parts in many movies don’t speak, are delicious and are highly paid…Junior Mints, popcorn and chocolate covered almonds. Given my penchant for supplementing mediocre Hollywood offerings with indulgent, albeit unhealthy fare, it’s remarkable that I’ve paid enough attention… Continue reading

  • I’m Pilgrim, but My Indian is Stirring

    Part one My daughter Lauren has an ear tag from birth about the size of an uncooked lentil. At the age of four, she informed her two younger siblings that her ear tag was Cherokee Indian…the rest of her was… Continue reading

  • Do you prefer reading bound books or digital books?

    I bought a Macintosh computer in 1984. No hard drive, only a single 128K RAM processor used to run floppies which held both data and software programs. I still suffer from floppy drive elbow from switching disks again and again… Continue reading

  • Sonic hearing $19.95…the Wisdom of George Eliot, Priceless

    It was payday, and my son, home from college for the weekend could smell cash. Having just purchased the latest Apple laptop with borrowed funds, he was on a mission to earn money to pay for his new computer. He… Continue reading