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childhood 9

Three Trees Once Grew

Although my vision, and my neck, and my sense of balance, and certainly my sense of hope, were all impaired, I could still prune. And as I pruned, I reflected…

Scenes From a Stolen Childhood: A Review of Kinderszenen

Only in Israel, I think in retrospect, would twelve-year-olds be this intimately familiar with the history of the Holocaust, the violence and suffering of oppression in the Warsaw Ghetto, and…

Tree Tipping

Many Marches ago, a tree cracked in half, and my life began to change into what it’s become today.

Wisdom Crieth Without: Features of an Inspirational Speech

We speak to connect with ideas and with the Divine. Of all the speeches I have heard in-person and not in a movie, or play, recording, or manuscript, a few…

The Borough Playground

It’s children that make the neighborhood, and when children are outdoors, you’ll want porches in the front of your houses, so that you can see the streets where they often…
February 27, 2023

Call the Midwife: Twenty-First Century Edition

Having experienced pregnancy and childbirth with both a traditionally trained OB/GYN and with midwives, the philosophical differences are abundantly clear.
January 26, 2023

All Shall Be Well: A Review of Raft of Stars

Then I read a book like Raft of Stars, and I am again filled with wonder. Not just at nature–at rivers, forests, and fields–but at my children themselves.

Spring Fever

I had bought a few baseball cards when I was eight years old, mostly for the gum, but the start of fourth grade, in 1967, was when I became serious.
March 31, 2020

The Vast White Landscape: E.B. White’s “Great Snows” Revisited

Rock Island, IL A century ago in New England, the approach to snow was quite different. When snow began to fly, people switched to runners. Roads were not plowed out,…
Jason Peters
December 23, 2009