I just watched a couple episodes of a Nat Geo mini-series that looks back at those heady days of the dot.com boom. Overall I liked The Valley of the Boom more than I thought I would—generally, I think people who’ve had a front row seat for an event that is covered in the news or […]

A couple updates on last week’s post: First, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign graduate students (members of the Graduate Employees Organization) stayed on strike long enough to end up getting what looks to be a fair deal for themselves. Hats off to them and their supporters, which included their undergraduate students and their counterparts up […]

Back in—I think it was early1986—Beth was several months into blindness, and a baby was on the way. And I was out of work. At first, unemployment was by choice. I was home to help Beth in the early months of learning to live in a completely different way. Before she lost her sight, we’d […]

We’ve posted before about Steven and Nancy, our friends who generously volunteered to adopt Hanni when she retired from her duties as my guide dog. Steven and Nancy and Hanni had a great several years together–Hanni lived to 17!  But when she died earlier this year, Hanni left a big void. Nancy has posted here before, […]

Awhile back I posted about Hillbilly Elegy, a book that has gotten a lot of attention and raised a lot of hackles. Author J.D. Vance tells the story of his upbringing in Ohio, and of his forbears and other family members’ roots in Appalachia. The people Vance describes initially thrived in industrial Ohio, but eventually […]