A new academic year had just begun. After 10 years as a high-school teacher and after another decade as a technical writer, I was in my second year as a writing specialist at a community college in upstate New York. My desk stood in the midst of a large, open room on the lower level of the library, a place we called the Learning Assistance Center. I remember the day was bright and warm, and the early morning sun streamed through the windows that lined the southern wall. …

The Three Advantages of Watching Movies at Home versus the Four Benefits of Going to the Theater

I love movies. I love watching movies. I love analyzing movies. And I love discussing movies. But most of all, I love going to the movies. And after a hiatus of almost a year and a half due to COVID 19, Barbara and I visited our local theater again to watch Disney’s summer spectacular, Jungle Cruise with Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt. The movie itself wasn’t spectacular, but it was a welcome diversion, one that got us up off our couch, into our…

I love a good salad, especially one with juicy tomatoes, with crunchy cucumbers and onions, and with bits of basil leaves on top for additional flavor. My wife and I usually have a salad with our evening meal, and we often add other items such as celery, carrots, peppers, olives, cranberries, pepitas, goat cheese, and artichoke hearts to our bowl of lettuce or spring mix. Lately, though, our salads have possessed an additional special quality because for the first time in my 70 years of life, I actually planted a garden and harvested some of those ingredients.

Why did I…

Each summer when I was growing up, my father’s extended family held a reunion picnic in July at a state park about an hour from our home. Since my dad had seven brothers and three sisters, you can imagine the collection of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, usually well over 50 of us. And we held that reunion for well over 50 years until many of the aunts and uncles became too frail to attend and many of the cousins moved out of the area. …

How many of you are old enough to remember record albums? For those of you who are too young to remember, a record album is a 12-inch slice of vinyl, about the size of a personal pan pizza that we would spin on a turntable, and then, we would drop a very fine needle onto that disk in order to hear our favorite music. Each album had about 10 to 12 songs, and, then, after an artist or a group had put out three or four of these albums, they would release a collection of their greatest hits, again about…

“Hello” and “Good-bye” are two of the most common greetings in our daily lives. We typically salute one another with “Hello” when we meet at school, at work, or in the neighborhood, and we usually say farewell with “Good-bye” as we exit those same locations to return to our homes. Interestingly, those same two words provide the basic framework for a standard cover letter.

What is a cover letter? Essentially, a cover letter accompanies your résumé when you send it to an employer to apply for a job. In theory, you could just send your résumé to the employer to…

About 50 years ago, when I applied for my first job after college, writing my résumé was a major project. First, I had to type the résumé on my manual typewriter using erasable paper, so I could later correct any errors. Then, I had to bring my original to a printer or copy center and purchase 50 copies on a better quality of paper. Finally, I had to distribute those copies to potential employers at job fairs or through the mail. In other words, every potential employer saw the same copy of my résumé, and no customization was possible. …

My first memories as a baseball fan all involve Mickey Mantle. Growing up in upstate New York during the late 1950s, the only team anyone talked about was the Yankees, and, of course, Mickey Mantle was the most popular Yankee of them all. When my friends and I played Wiffle ball in the back yard or organized pick-up games at the nearby field, we all eagerly claimed to be “The Mick” that day.

Then, when we were old enough to actually play in our local Little League, we all begged the coach to let us play centerfield or, even better…