Category Archives: Uncategorized

I am so picky about jazz, when I find a new jazz record that I like, I listen to it four or five times a week for months. Chet Baker With 50 Italian Strings is what I’m on now.

“Thirty miles from the Grand Canyon, travelling at around sixty miles an hour, I hit a deer with my Subaru Forester. I did not graze the deer, nor did I nick him, brush him, or scrape him. I hit the deer in exactly the way you would want to hit a deer if you wantedContinue reading “What I Learned By Totaling My Car In The Middle Of Nowhere, 2200 Miles From Home”

Bob Harris: “You want more mysterious?”

“In mulling Mr. Collins over for the last several days, I have come (once again) to a rather sobering thesis: I might be a lousy father. It is a thesis which follows inevitably from two rather simple facts, both easily proved by an honest, unsentimental assessment of the world. First, lousy fathers exist. Second, lousy fathers are unlikely to beContinue reading “If You Are A Lousy Father, You Have To Figure It Out On Your Own”

Justin Hall recently interviewed me for The Notion Club Podcast. We spoke about autodidactism, adulthood, classical education, and beauty. I am not always happy with interviews, but I was quite pleased with Justin’s set of questions and his conversation. As a tease: in this interview, I explain my friend Andrew’s excellent critique of the “life-longContinue reading “The Notion Club Podcast”

“What follows is a range of mild movies for children to R-rated films for adults. While there are one or two recent films on this list, I have tried to pick films that I have re-watched many times, and which were valuable to me at different stages in my life. I believe the best moviesContinue reading “25 Movie Recommendations”

“While teachers are apt to chide students about writing papers the night before, many teachers also procrastinate when it comes to grading and returning papers. Students who write their papers the night before rarely do great work, but teachers who attempt to grade forty essays in four hours are rarely doing great grading either.” -FromContinue reading “How To Avoid Grading Burnout”

“Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies.” -Nicolas Gomez Davila As men implode–as their marriages fail, as their relationships with their children fall apart–they become all the more insistent that they know how happy, competent men ought to live.