My brother and my sister-in-law are very generous. They’re awesome.

One thing I admire about my sister in law and something I want to thank her for is her unrelenting desire to create memories for her child, and, by extension, my children. Always thinking and planning, she has made holiday after holiday memorable for my kids.

These memories matter. We’re West Philly folks — possessions aren’t exactly central to our lives — but CC has always pushed for our kids to be together, for them to do and experience things, for them to create memories they’ll always have.

Thanks for another great holiday!

When I was in third grade or so and growing increasingly frustrated at my inability to play sports at the level that I wanted, my parents, seeing my growing misery, tried to find alternative activities. One was a drama class run by IE (Mrs. E.) a local actor, community player, and mom who had a bunch of older boys and a pair of Irish Setters named Shelley and Keats. (The names meant nothing to me at the time but my parents thought this was very amusing.)

Once a week I’d go to Mrs. E’s class and participate in all manner of “acting” and “improvisation” classes. I remember lots of games, lots of situations, lots of trying to talk to girls, lots of acting up. I remember Mrs. E. pulling me aside because I was too squirmy or restless to participate and having what I now recognize as the dreaded earnest conversation. (Sorry).

I got a lot from these classes. I saw some ways to be that weren’t related to sports; I got a love of performance; an ability or at least a comfort level with talking in public; some sense of dramatic timing. As I got older, I realized that there was a kind of intellectual heft that comes along with acting and writing and that Mrs. E was a kind of model for this sort of work and this kind of life.

Thank you Mrs. E.

Somewhere in the late 1970s we were vacationing with dear friends of my parents, the Gs, and Mr. G introduced me to Strat-o-matic baseball. I remember two things about that vacation: opting to hit and run in the ninth (basic version) and rolling a two, which meant a double, a winning run, and a feeling that someday I’d manage in the major leagues. I also remember an afternoon of listening to the Red Sox in the cottage and watching Mr. G light up when Dwight Evans hit a home run. Mr. G had a theory that Dwight Evans killed the ball in day games, a theory I should confirm on baseball reference someday.

Anyway, I learned the game and then tormented my parents to buy me more sets. I think I played with anyone who would play with me — friends, cousins, my brother — and when I couldn’t find anyone, I’d play on my own. I learned names that are still with me — Wee Willie Keeler, Cap Anson, Nap Lajoie — and whatever mathematical quickness I possess comes from endless hours of this game.

Now I have a son and we play an endless stream of games (see pic below). It’s led him into the same sort of reading and borderline obsession I used to have; I catch him reading old copies of Baseball Prospectus yearbooks (I used to read these books) and saying things to his sister like “you don’t know who Rich Gedman is and that he hit 18 homeruns in 1985.” Yes… he said that.

I owe you much more, Mr. G. Someday I’ll write about the letter you sent me after we went to the Bucky Dent game as well as what a handshake meant on a spring day in 1988, but for today, thank you for Strat-o-matic baseball, for talking baseball with me, and for being a role model for the kind of thoughtful intensity I try and bring to the rest of my life.

Photo: Series from the past few months:

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Coda — I love that Buddy Ryan’s kids played Strat-o-matic too.

I was walking with a colleague through the Philadelphia Zoo last Thursday afternoon. Our students had spent the morning presenting their work and we blew off steam by making the long walk to the Zoo.

We were talking about curiosity and where it comes from. Why are some individuals curious about everything? Interested in everything? Full of questions about everything?

I’ve said for a long time that any person who is humble and curious can learn to be a teacher but I have never tried to figure out how I could create or make those traits. I’ve come to the realization that if you can’t create curiosity, you might be able to inspire it. You can model it in your interactions, in your choices, in all the ways you choose to live your life.

This is a thank you to my mom and dad who must have modeled this curiosity in pretty much everything they did. National parks? Books? Travel? Music? Doing stuff? Trying new things? I think we felt it all our lives. I hope my kids feel it too.

When my brother and I got to be old enough that we didn’t really need a babysitter, my parents used to arrange for the teenager next door to come and babysit us. I don’t think we would have presented a real danger to the house or each other, but I guess my parents wanted to be sure. Plus we loved this kid — JL — who used to come on occasional Friday or Saturday nights.

The thing I remember most was him sitting on a chair between our bedrooms and telling us stories about life at Reading High. I wish I could remember these stories but all I do remember is laughing so hard that my sides hurt. I remember my brother in the other room screaming with laughter. I remember that they were endless — some kid doing something in school that led him to the hall then to the parking lot then to the gym — and that we couldn’t here these stories enough times.

I thank JL for giving us a sense that all the craziness that was coming in adolescence, craziness we could already feel in the neighborhood around us, would be okay, maybe even funny. I thank him for sitting with us and telling these stories from high school so that we could relax a bit and understand that there was nothing to fear. I thank him for being so patient with kids who were younger and who didn’t have an older brother to tell us this stuff. Mostly, I just thank him for his kindness to my brother and I.

JL, I hope you are well.

Another November month of novel-writing has begun and once again I’m dust before the month has even really started. I thought I’d turn to this blog instead and start on an idea I had a couple months ago, while thinking about how tough some of my students can be and remembering how impossible I must have been at their age.

From the heroes of my college days:

when you’re young and defensive,
it comes off offensive,
and it’s hard to repay
the tolerance that you borrow.

At 45, I’ve incurred debts no honest may could really pay. So…I’ll try to write a public thank you each day for the next thirty days and see where it takes me.

All the greens!

Under the tent is
Burpee Lechuga Vivian
Seed Savers Merveille des Quatres Saisons
F-M Collards
F-M Kale
Seed Savers Susan’s Red bib
Burpee Little Gem lettuce
Seed Saver’s Arugula
Seed Saver’s Winter Density Lettuce
Seed Saver’s Spinach
Burpee Spinach

Forty days gets me mid-November. If things stay mild, could be eating through December.

On day three, I watered from above. Today I thinned plants — my hotdog fingers cannot manage to get a single seed in the whole — and soaked the bottom with 4/5 water and 1/5 nutrient solution. I find thinning plants, whether in the rockwool or outside, to be disheartening. After all I’ve had success in getting them started and now I have to kill some of them?