Second Street Soliloquy

“Courage is when you’re afraid but you keep on moving anyway courage is when you’re in pain but you keep on living anyway It’s not how many times you’ve been knocked down it’s how many times you get back up…

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Rain on My Parade

When I was very young, Christmas was an exciting time. Of course it was – I was a child growing up in America and for many of the Christmases, we were not poor. For some we were, but even then…

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After the Snow

Before the Snow | During the Snow The summers I was 14 and 15, I spent intense three-week sessions at the Center for Talented Youth (CTY) at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The program was designed to augment the studies…

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Before the Snow

The conflagration crackles in the cast-iron fireplace. The tabby lounges on the table, soaking up the radiant warmth from its glow at a safe, unsingeworthy distance. Later he will rise and stretch, his yawn revealing sharp fangs that have never…

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What I’ve Learned in the Last 48 Hours

There seems to be a directly proportional (or close) relationship between pain and learning. Or at least challenge and growth. Our muscles exist as a metaphor for the way we are supposed to advance ourselves. With the tearing of new…

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From You to Me

I don’t know why I’m afraid to fly back to my home where I know I’ll be all right I never could quite say how you made me feel the way you always did but kid, I’d never treat you…

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The UMBC Redemption

The 2002 American Parliamentary Debate Association (APDA) National Championship at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) was one of the great highs and lows of my life. It marked the culmination of my competitive debate career and a turning…

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Happy? Thanksgiving!

It’s my first Thanksgiving in Philadelphia since 1998, wherein I stayed with my friend Kate and I met her rollicking family and quotations for the ages were first coined. I’m friends with Kate again, after a bit of a hiatus,…

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Handwriting Analysis (or: the Role of Coincidence?)

It’s been a rough couple days in the northeast. People say things like that which they have no business saying. Most people in the northeast have probably been doing just fine. There’s preparations for what appears to be the northeast’s…

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Yellow Rain

Something transpired today, forging just the right mix of wind and rain and airborne upheaval to bring every remaining leaf off the trees in Highland Park. Not really every leaf, of course, for a quick examination of the trunked masses…

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