Suprise Me

Apples? Bah humbug. Read More

It was the dark winter solstice of December 2020.  Everything was shut down because of COVID, and vaccines were a mere glimmer.  Life was suspended.  Work had stopped abruptly one day in March—I was too old to risk showing up in person, and virtual options were poor—so de facto retirement came more suddenly than I… Read More

I learned the most from my years of volunteering at a well-run school under the leadership of the man who became my mentor, Warren Cherry. Read More

I am not organized, and I have no particular desire to be. You can figure this out as soon as you walk into my house. Well, sometimes the downstairs looks organized, because we scoop everything up and take it upstairs if we know we are having company. This leads to some chaos in the upstairs… Read More

I used to joke that I had motor oil running through my veins. Thanks to my great uncle: Uncle Meyer, as I’ve written about before, most of the Sarasons came north from St. Louis to Detroit to work for GM (my father worked in Flint for the Chevrolet Division starting in 1937, but after WWII, did… Read More

Next hurtle – what contractor in his right mind would undertake this project with such an unrealistic budget and very tight timeline? It was now June and we needed to open the school in September. Read More

You would think that with the name Mr. Ed, I wouldn’t have much to say about shoes. What is there to say about U-shaped pieces of iron nailed to my feet? There’s not a lot of variety in horseshoes, insofar as I can tell. But having grown up in the shadow of Cal Poly –… Read More

Those preschoolers who started school on September 11, 2001, may not remember that day, but I hope they will be able to recapture the sense of community, caring, and working for the common good that we felt back then. Read More

Around the World in 80 Days I seldom saw my parents feuding,  but there was one thorny issue they couldn’t agree on.  When my mother retired after years of teaching she wanted my father to retire as well so that like many of their retired friends they could travel freely. They had traveled a bit… Read More

I look back along the gently curving corridor of my life... Read More