Blog Posts

In the fall if 1989, I sat deep within the blue light of Conestoga High School’s dusty, off-white library single-finger typing my Northwestern University application into one of the school’s ten, well-worn IBM PCs. I don’t remember much about the assignment, or my thesis, or even what made me think I should be a journalism…

There is no panic for a seventeen-year-old like the panic incurred by hoisting and spinning a dozen toddlers eight feet in the air, then leaving them there for so long that they began to cry for their parents and attempt to leap from their seats. That seventeen-year-old was me twenty years ago this month. I…

Master Luthier Carlo Greco’s dusty workshop sits two stories and two thousand miles above 48th Street through an unmarked, glass door, one flight up a rickety staircase from an accordion maker. Carlo was the General Foreman of Guild Guitars from 1959-1977. A classical guitar builder from Italy by way of Argentina, he traveled to South…

I’m not sure whether my life is more moving, or that I’m more open to being moved. Either way, I choke up pretty easily these days. A few weeks ago, for example, Abbi and I bought Ethan a grab bag of magic tricks for his sixth birthday. He and Edward sat transfixed, wide-eyed and amazed…

There’s so much to be said about today’s Michael Jackson Memorial. But the chorus of pundits, critics and sycophants is at fever pitch. Three things, then. It was difficult to take in the once-in-a-lifetime event as a fan or even a regular member of American culture. I was in the back row of the MTV…

When I went there, anyway, ninety percent of Syracuse University students were from New Jersey, New York City (“The City,” as they presumptuously called it), or Long Island. Now, by 1989, I’d been to New York City to see a few Broadway plays, which — coming from suburban Philadelphia — meant I’d at least been…