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Survey Responses from John, Elly, and Elaine
A college pal, John, responded to Allegra’s survey questions thusly: I would remove my wife’s student loan debt. It is a lot, and it hangs over us. I went to New York City with the woman who later became my wife. It was great because it was the first time I ever traveled with someone…
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Survey Responses from Byron and Virginia
In the next week or so, I’ll be posting the survey responses of those who have given me permission. Let’s start that roll with the responses of Allegra’s pappy and our family best friend, Virginia. Quick aside: the first sentence of Virginia’s #6 (her ideal day) made me teary. Twenty years going back and forth…
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Tell Me Something: What I Told Her
Thank you to everyone who responded to my last post and completed a survey for our rising senior in high school, Miss Allegra. She’s at the point where she has around 60 surveys from folks, with new ones still trickling in. Eventually, when it feels like “time,” she and a good friend of ours who…
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Tell Me Something
When Allegra was seven, she — for the first but not the last time — created a survey. She had questions, and she wanted to know how a bunch of people would respond. And they did. After a few weeks, she had collected survey responses from folks around the globe, and her entire second grade…
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The Gap
I parked in the lot by the grocery store so I could buy a few things after my run. I had an hour and a half before the afternoon’s storms were to hit, giving me plenty of time to get some exercise, buy scallions, and be home before the skies unleashed. It was a good…
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Things I’m Liking
That Duchess Kate takes her own pictures of her kids for press release rather than having a professional photographer manipulating their little selves into pleasing moments. It’s possible I’m a fan of mothers with cameras stop calling my children “long-suffering” admire this birthday portrait of Princess Charlotte That the nieces of Chimimanda Adichie (the…
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The Word “Gullible” Doesn’t Actually Appear in the Dictionary
Teddy said it was a hat, So I put it on. Now dad is saying, ‘where the heck’s the toilet plunger gone?’ –Shel Silverstein In Northern Minnesota, winter is long and spring capricious. By April, residents’ moods correlate to the thermometer. That’s why, on a rare, glorious, sun-drenched Saturday when I was out for a…
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No Shit
It’s almost midnight when I notice the hummock of wet tissue resting in the bottom of the hotel toilet. Two quick thoughts careen through my brain: “Where did all the water go?” and “Why would the Michelin Man come here to die?” My brain isn’t functioning at its peak; twenty minutes ago, I took a…
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The Week I Turned Fifty
Saturday: The Orientalist paintings of Ottoman artist Osman Hamdi Bey are my absolute favorites when it comes to puzzlin’. Each image conveys a snapshot of life from an era that now seems ancient but which, technically, only ended a hundred years ago — when my maternal grandfather was in his twenties. While some argue Osman…
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A Lion, a Giraffe, and a Picnic by a Lake
Introduction from Diane First, a bit about me. I was born in Boston and spent my teenage years wrestling with an urge to get out and see the world. For almost 20 years, I’ve taught linguistics at the University of Leeds in England. In 2004, I took a career break to go backpacking and met…
