I am a big fan of giving thanks, specific appreciations, and expressing delight. I set up meetings so that their last five minutes or so are devoted to creating the opportunity to say what we learned from each other or what we appreciated. I find that my work is best when I wrap my mind…
My diet has changed over the years. I am much less likely to eat chocolate, consume ice cream, or use butter than I did decades ago. These changes did not occur because I have had two heart attacks, but rather because I, like you, listened to the news that lower fat intake improves our health…
Just hours ago, I wrote a dear friend, “I respectfully ask that you reconsider our relationship and be sure the one we have matches the one you want. If it does not, please consider a redesign.” I added, “I can be a forever friend.” Perhaps because of Paul’s death a year and half ago and…
When an idea has found its time, it seems to show up everywhere. Who didn’t know about climate change a decade ago? Now, despite the best efforts of corporate idiots in the fossil fuel business, we learn more about it daily. No Milwaukeean over 60 can resist recounting deep snow and bitter cold of the old days.…
Millions of children and families across the US are deeply entrenched in the seasonal rituals associated with the return to school. From K-4 through college, young people are on the move. In more affluent school districts parents are filling exhaustive lists of expected school supplies and child demands for the right sneakers. Many, many more…
Lub, Dub. Nearly 50 years ago I went to a party wearing flip flops, fishnet stockings, and grapes. Period. Lub. Because it was very cold the night of that New Years Eve costume party, my thin trench coat did little to keep me warm as I knelt in the back of a car on the…
In the mid-1980s, the AIDS epidemic prompted me to take the pulse of rooms for a different reason than I had as a pre-teen before I first came out or as a young adult when I first went out as a gay man. I had earlier tested spaces to decide if I could come out and…
River Queen, Castaways, Circus-Circus, The Factory — these were the names of bars I went to when I first started socializing as a gay young adult. They were not the first gay bars I went to, however. Oddly, my first encounter with one of these was with my mother who was naive to the fact that…
By age 10 I had become pretty adept at taking the pulse of a room. I knew when my dad had too much to drink, when a holiday was in danger of being cancelled, when the cake would go uneaten, when my mom was fed-up and overwhelmed. Most of the time I tested a space…
You have served many, many freshman and sophomore students with warm, personal, and solid advice about their academic programs, just as you served many generations of English majors before your retirement. Advising is an essential, though usually unheralded, form of teaching. By continuing to advise students, you have continued to teach; and the College is…
Creating Community for Everyone 