Hopey Changey

Dear Graduating Class of 2012, First, let me say how saddened I was to hear about your original commencement speaker’s unfortunate accident in the batting cage with the defective pitching machine. Wow. They say once the swelling goes down, the doctors will be...

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Restaurant Review: Havana Club

Amaury Torres has a dream. I have one, too. OK, so his is far more inspirational, starting in 1994 on a raft leaving Havana, Cuba, and traveling through Guantánamo, Panama and Miami before ending up on Highway 14 in the San Marcos area south of Santa Fe. You can read...

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Summer Greens

“Don’t know why you care how I make my money,” my daughter Poppy said during a quarrel about spending cash, hard work and the injustices my wife and I endured under parents whose version of a surprise party consisted of signing you up for jobs you...

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New Age Of Reason

Just last week in one of my English classes, the highschooligans and I were discussing a central character in Toni Morrison’s novel Song of Solomon. When this fictional woman was born, her father chose her name blindly out of the Bible, and she ended up with the...

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The Same Road Twice

This is how cute I think I am: Before I go driving with my 15-year-old daughter, Poppy, I burn a CD of songs loosely related to piloting an automobile. The playlist runs the gamut from “Sober Driver” by Dengue Fever to one of Poppy’s favorites:...

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A Christmas Story

This Christmas, in addition to jeggings and Nerf hatchets, my children Poppy and London also received gifts from a friend who had been in the Middle East visiting family. Poppy’s bounty included sweets from far-off lands, a tube of Jordanian lipstick that...

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