Reflection Posts

Auld Lang Syne - Jacksonville Edition

January, 2025

The most significant chapter of my life so far is coming to a close. We've been in Jacksonville for more than 8 years now, and in a few short weeks, we'll be moving to Saint Paul to start over. Jacksonville is the only real home our kids have known, and we've made so many dear, dear friends here over the years. We moved here in the summer of 2016. Seven months later, just after the New Year, just before Trump's first inauguration, I wrote the following:

The Continued Audacity of Hope

November, 2024

Like many of you, I'm feeling a mix of emotions right now: a strange cocktail of shock but also of familiarity, of energy but also resignation, the kneejerk desire to blame every racist-homophobic-gun-loving redneck who voted for him but also the desire for the Left to take a hard look at itself.

Harris did not lose the election for any one strategic decision, or policy, or position. She was placed in a near-impossible situation, and she and her team did just about the damned best job they could have. Given the hand she was dealt, maybe we were foolish to hope for any other outcome. But maybe not...

Zen and the Art of Fishing

September, 2021

I've recently picked up fishing more seriously. I've always loved it, and I've had a simple kayak here in Jacksonville for a number of years, but I never had anything fancy or any gear that made fishing from a kayak particularly simple or easy. In April, after I got vaccinated, I started playing in-person poker again, and I was doing fairly well! But then delta hit, and I decided to back out again for a bit. So I spent my poker bankroll on an actual, pedal-driven fishing kayak...

Christmas

December, 2020

Now I've worked more from home for my new job than at the office. It's been a full year since I've seen my family back in Austin. My wife and I became home owners for the first time, moving out of a house we shared with our close friends for the last four years, with all of the feelings that entails. We pulled our kids out of public school, tried to go back, then pulled them out again. And one close friend and my mother-in-law are both fighting off the tail-end of COVID this Christmas morning...

And Give a Hand o' Thine

January, 2017

I didn't sleep well the other night. I saw each hour of the night displayed on the alarm clock. Maybe I stole some little slices of rest, but mostly I just failed at clearing my mind over and over again. School was starting the next morning, and, while I wasn't actively dreading it, perhaps by brain is just tired of it, unwilling to jump into the new semester. I teach good kids, and my coworkers and administration are great, but I just feel so bored, so unfulfilled. I haven't figured out what's so different this year than previous ones. I was a little bored then too, but not to this extent...

Partners

April, 2016

The room's lighting was mellow and soft and the rustic wooden bed frame hinted at a ski lodge or little B&B. The only sounds in that instant were the soft splashing of my wife in the bathtub. We were alone, just husband and wife. But this was no winter vacation.

"Another one is coming," Agata said. I bent over and applied counter-pressure to her lower back. "Lower," she said, "and father apart." I obliged.

To Live Savingly

November, 2015

I've just finished reading two essay collections which have refocused my aim in writing: Wendell Berry's latest Our Only World and Barbara Kingsolver's Small Wonder. Many years ago I decided I could never write fiction: I'm better at articulating my thoughts than I am creating characters. Essays and poems have always been my strength...

Education & Empathy

July, 2015

My sister recently bought me a copy of The Myth of the Shiksa and Other Essays by Edwin H. Friedman, the most prevalent student of Bowen theory, a systems approach to family counseling. In an interview entitled "Empathy Defeats Therapy," Friedman writes,

...I think it is precisely our focus on empathy that is one of the major factors that has everybody stuck. It's a post-World War II emphasis. The world doesn't even appear in the original Oxford English Dictionary published in 1932...

Reflection

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Memorial Day

May, 2015

Every now and then, I like to sing our national anthem in the shower. It's a tricky little song with music that can be quite powerful, as I'm sure we all know...

What the hell am I doing with my life?

April, 2015

That "Wear Sunscreen" song has a line that goes like this:

I'm going on 31 in September, and those words are both comforting and terrifying. I have felt so conflicted for so long about what I should be doing with this life of mine...

Grandeur

March, 2015

I am currently reading Barbara Kingsolver's collection of essays Small Wonder (which as been refreshing so far, and I recommend it!). The epigraph is a quote from Wendell Berry which reads, "To treat life as less than a miracle is to give up on it." This is a theme about which I've often wondered, especially since I no longer count myself among those who believe in miracles...

I am an Atheist

January, 2015

This post has been a long time coming. Losing one's religion is a funny thing—since I grew up a Catholic among Catholics, most people in my life probably assume I'm still the same old Chad. In many ways I am, but in this one, central aspect, I have changed. I write this post mainly to clear the air, to put it all out there so that those in my life who have known me growing up can know me still. I have a hard time responding sometimes when people assume that I still attend Mass regularly, or still share their political and social views, or still pray...

"Parenthood" on Race

December, 2014

My wife and I have been watching NBC's "Parenthood" on Netflix. We are a few episodes into the fourth season. For anyone who hasn't heard of it yet, I'd highly recommend it, especially to you young parents out there.

The other night we watched the episode titled "The Talk" (Season 4, episode 4) which had a surprising impact on me. A mixed-race couple—he is white, she is black—have to explain the word "nigga" to their eight-year-old son. His dad works at a recording studio and the son, Jabar, overheard a hip hop artist use the word...

Robin Williams

August, 2014

I've been absent from the blogosphere this summer. It seems to be something of a perpetual truth in my life that when I finally have time to write, I do something else.

The school year has just begun with me not knowing quite where the summer went. In July we traveled,  and I had training, but I have no clue where June went. I don't feel like I've been teaching for a year already. That was it? One and counting? I'll be getting to five and then ten by next week it seems. A year feels like too small an increment...

The Weight of History

May, 2014

Several months ago, I asked my students to reflect on the following quote:

I decided not tell them that the quote is from Marx. I had several students who read it and just weren't interested in thinking about what it means...

The Gods of Measurement

March, 2014

Here is a little example of how far behind our children are. I gave a test about the conservation of momentum several weeks ago. It was, as they all are, a multiple choice test. I have Casio scientific calculators in my room for the students to use, and when they plugged in their numbers into the momentum equation (p=mv), the calculator told them the answer was ".1". Now, the answers on the actual test ranged from, "10.0", "1.0", "0.10", and "0.01". I had several students raise their hand to ask why their answer wasn't one of the choices, as they were pretty sure they had done it correctly...

Space & Place

March, 2014

The other night I had the pleasure of attending a small dinner and concert at a little bed and breakfast in Dripping Springs. The original house was built in 1857, and the evening began with a brief history of the original owners and how it came to be what it is today. Overall the evening was beautiful. It was small; no more than twenty-five people, with the dining room doubling as the concert space...

In Remembrance

March, 2014

Eleven years ago, a good friend of mine died in a car accident on the way to school. He swerved to miss a deer and flipped his Ford Explorer. We were juniors in high school at the time and in the band together. Along with some friends, we would carpool to the early-morning marching practices. I think it was during chemistry that an administrator came over the announcements and asked all the band members to come to the band hall. By this time there were rumors, but nobody knew what was going on. While the rest of the school heard the news, our band director told us that Josh had died that morning...

The Beauty and Perils of Unity

January, 2014

On the drive to the high school where I teach, there is a hill which always manages to offer me a splendid view of the morning. This past Monday when I topped the hill, due to the clouds (and probably pollution), the sun was enormous as it peaked over the horizon. It reminded me of something from The Lion King: wavy and red as a smoldering coal. I smiled to myself as I imagined the entire hemisphere spinning toward the sun...

A Young Father

December, 2013

On Wednesday, my wife and I, along with many family and friends, welcomed our firstborn son into the world. Ira was born at 10:26 AM, weighing in at 8 lbs 3 oz. Both Agata and Ira are in great health, and labor went easily as far as labors go (well, you might have to verify that with her...). We named him Ira for a couple of reasons. My Puerto Rican maternal great-grandmother was named Iris, and we toyed with naming a daughter that before we knew he was a boy. Also, I think we just listen to too much NPR. Ira Glass and Ira Flatow now have a namesake...

The Essential Facts

November, 2013

The title of this post is drawn from Thoreau's famous line in Walden describing why he went to live in the woods. He wished to

Poetry and the Past

October, 2013

Every now and then, more so these days, I need a little reminder that life isn't quite so serious as it's made out to be. Cosmic forces do not hang in the balance. There aren't answers to the all-consuming questions of life. And sometimes, there really isn't anything else I should be doing. I have yet to find a better way to jostle a melancholy mood than Billy Collins. The former Poet Laureate has mastered the art of embarrassing his readers back to a state of sober levity...

Teaching life

September, 2013

I started graduate school with big plans. I was going to write the book, the book that would make everyone say, "OH! How did I not see this? Finally!" and boom, the world would be saved. I knew deep down that it wasn't actually going to be like that, but I wasn't prepared for exactly how much it's nothing like that at all. Higher education, especially the humanities, has become a pyramid scheme: cheap graduate student and adjunct professor labor holds up grossly inflated university president salaries. Tenure track positions are being replaced with five adjunct positions...