Before the Essay… During these two weeks of vacation from “work work,” I’ve been writing each day, talking with a few trusted friends most days, and reading in between. The reading has included select academic pieces I wrote in graduate school, and reflective essays composed for personal and professional audiences. All of the writing from before I knew that “not parent expected” was a thing … Continue reading Out of the Box: Learning and Teaching in Other Ways

Rather than learning from our parents and ancestors how to live into death, and even beyond it in a spiritual sense, we attempt to create away from death, and thereby away from life as well. Greg Mogenson, Greeting the Angels Habitations The swivel chairs long in my living room – their backs shaped like perfect clam shells, the seats gracefully broadening toward the front so … Continue reading Dreams Between Us: Elegy for My Father

I spent most of today in the closet – literally and figuratively. The first photo is the “huh, there’s space back here” section I discovered in the clear out. In that literal mode, I cleared everything out – sorting things into use, recycle, donate, and dump, nearly all of it untouched since that main room closet became the space for things I didn’t want to … Continue reading Cleaning Closets

Across the three years since discovering I am not linked genetically to Pops, to the whole of my Alexander-Stafford-Evan-Svelstad family, I’ve pretty consistently refused to describe my parents’ decision to not reveal my paternity secret as a lie, or a deception. As consistently, I have acknowledged that they made a secret of my paternity: Did my parents keep secret the circumstances of my conception? Yes. … Continue reading Never a lie. No longer a secret.

I’ve been thinking, this first week of not teaching in the 2020-2021 academic year, about my friend David Roberts – his mind, heart, soul beauty. In thinking, I’ve been reading essays I wrote because of his invitations and conversations, especially a series of them for his cooperative blog Societal Innovations, which offers this tagline: Thoughts and ideas for an optimistic future. Yes, that’s our David. … Continue reading Innovative Mentoring – Mentoring Innovatively: 10 Years Later