b.rox

I was searching high and low for turkey drumsticks. They’re normally available in most local stores, but suddenly, the weekend before the holiday, we couldn’t find them anywhere. We visited seven groceries. Plenty of whole turkeys, turkey breasts, turkey thighs, ground turkey — but no drumsticks. Finally we found them at Rouse’s on the second [...]

Here’s my entry in the Day in the Life contest. If you like this, please visit the mix on 8tracks and click the ♥ button so I can get a piece of the glory. Here’s a handy guide to help you enjoy the mix. 1. Rising with love and positivity 2. Morning commute 3. At [...]

I’m going to be making a presentation to a special interest group at the American Educational Research Association’s upcoming conference. My topic? Blogging in post-Katrina New Orleans. My idea is to recount five or so of the biggest stories to emerge from the local blogosphere since the flooding of the city in 2005. I mean [...]

So. My boss and I went to St. Louis for five days and four nights for POD 2010. Here are some notes on the whole experience. Perhaps most noteworthy, from a strictly personal perspective, was the fact that I co-presented at not one but two sessions. The first was called “Investigating Our Blind Spot,” which [...]

Dear Persephone, You sure are getting big. I know this because you tell me about it. Constantly. “I’m big. I’m big. I’m so big. I’m too big.” There was a statue of at the New Orleans Museum of Art, a headless Winged Figure, which used to scare you, but now you’re not frightened anymore, because [...]

I mentioned last January that we got stuck with a big ($500) utility bill that month. There was no question in my mind that our energy consumption was off the chain because of a record-breaking three-day cold snap. Now that I’ve got a year’s worth of utility bills, this is even more evident. Here’s a [...]

It’s been almost two weeks since I got back from POD 2010, and I still haven’t managed to write about it. But I find I can’t write about POD 2010 until I’ve addressed POD 2009. POD stands for the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education, and it’s pretty much the big conference for [...]

Here are two cool videos that have bounced into my life over the last 24 hours. Hola, B! This comes from someone I’ve never met, a guy in Philadelphia. Sometimes with all this “cultural production” I do — not sure what else to call it — I feel like I’m whispering down a well. Why do [...]

As a number of people pointed out to me, the trouble with celebrating the first thousand days of life is that the number 1,000 is generally beyond the grasp of most two-year-olds. A couple friends had funny ideas about how to communicate the idea. “Let her play in a pile of 1,000 $1 bills so [...]

Persephone is a thousand today. It’s her thousandth day of life. It seems like the sort of thing that should be celebrated, and I’ve had it marked on my calendar for a while. But time got away from me, and now it’s here, and I haven’t a clue what to do. How do you celebrate [...]

Saturday morning I was out early conducting a short tour of the Lafitte Corridor. I was skeptical about how many people would be up for a hike at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, but pleasantly surprised when a dozen people showed up, plus a half dozen more who joined us in progress. We walked from [...]

I thought about doing a photo series titled “Butts of St. Louis,” but I worried that the good citizens of that city might find it disrespectful. I would never, ever want to offend the residents of any Midwestern city that isn’t named Indianapolis. Plus, I only actually took two such photos. There’s twenty more photos [...]

Since it’s Veterans Day, I thought I’d point to something written by a veteran. Here’s an article by Bradford J. Kelley, which appeared in the morning paper. “Election glossed over wars — and warriors” He begins by noting the lack of attention paid to our current military engagements in the recent election cycle, but notes [...]

I think I got a bad burger at the airport in Houston. Ugh. The very idea of an airport hamburger sounds kind of gross. Anyway, Sunday evening I was feeling kind of queasy. Over the course of the night I didn’t sleep much, as my body forcibly ejected all contents from my gastrointestinal system in [...]

25 years ago today I was visiting Moscow. That was a great trip, which remains a highlight of my life. Back in 1985, visiting Moscow was no trivial thing for an American. It meant going behind the “Iron Curtain.” It was toward the end of the so-called Second Cold War. Gorbachev had become the General [...]

Over the last few weeks I’ve been fiddling with constructing my family tree on ancestry.com. (Thanks to my old high school friend Georgie for getting me hooked.) I managed to trace one line back as far as Torvild Ljøstad, my great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great [...]