Cowboy, outfielder, architect, trumpet player, lawyer, teacher and writer—these, more or less in order, were my notions of what I would do for my life’s work, at least through the age of 40. My “influences,” as pop musicians say, were many: TV shows like “My Friend Flicka” (a boy and his horse); my baseball card…
As I write this column, my thoughts are running ahead to the journey to United International College in Zhuhai, People’s Republic of China, that Anne and I will begin Nov. 10 with our colleagues, Per Anderson (associate dean for Global Learning) and Lisa Sethre-Hofstad (associate dean for Core and Advising). Anne and I have never…
“Who knows where the time goes?” Studying in London, I first heard Judy Collins sing that ballad when I was 19 and Collins was in her early thirties. I heard Collins sing it again this past Saturday night, this time with my wife, Anne, at the Fargo Theater. Collins is 73 now, and Anne and…
What we take to be a given often turns out to be a human invention that’s been in place so long that we’ve forgotten how it came to be. Lots of examples rush to mind: the earth-centered cosmos, the assumption that women can’t do “men’s work,” or—this comes from my Pennsylvania upbringing—the grim certainty that…