Nothing is Simple About Terrorism in Israel

Ping!

My assistant coach hit a practice grounder to the left side of the pitcher’s mound. Our shortstop shifted his weight slightly, caught the ball in his glove and tossed it up just past his shoulder. He snatched it out of the air with his bare hand and fired a throw to first. The first baseman had to stretch his glove down the foul line to make the catch but managed to keep his foot on the base. I pursed my lips slightly but kept quiet.

Ping!

Coach hit another ground ball, this time to third. The third baseman moved to his right to catch the ball backhanded with his glove, made a quick 360-degree turn as he transferred the ball to his other hand and threw the ball as hard as he could. I watched the ball sail into the outfield and decided I’d seen enough.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Everybody bring it in for a minute.”

The team jogged over to me and looked up expectantly.

“Look,” I began, “we don’t need flashy plays here. This isn’t Sportscenter; nobody’s making the Top Ten Plays or Web Gems and we don’t get any extra points for style. Just make the play.”

I heard a number of chuckles, mixed with some slight groans and an, “Aww man!” from the team.

“Seriously!” I pressed. “I want boring! Give me the most boring, straightforward plays you can make. I don’t want to see Derek Jeter throwing the ball as he jumps and spins. I want to see you field the ball cleanly, set your feet, make a solid throw to get the out, and I want to yawn!”

The players laughed as they returned to their positions to continue practicing. Continue reading “Nothing is Simple About Terrorism in Israel”

The Missing Piece From the Abortion Debate

This post was born out of a conversation with my wife shortly after laws designed to limit access to abortion were passed in Georgia, Alabama and other states. I had been trying to figure out how to write about the topic without simply writing a straightforward pro or con stance. T’s description of her reactions to the political rhetoric surrounding abortion helped me realize my own frustrations with the conversations I was hearing. Given the extremely controversial nature of this topic, I want to make clear that this piece is intended to add to the discussion, rather than present a judgment about women’s rights regarding abortion.


It was about ten years ago that I visited the Bodies exhibit in lower Manhattan with my wife and my parents.

The exhibit – which is now in Las Vegas and Atlanta – was the most in-depth human anatomy lesson I had ever seen. There were over two hundred bodies, both male and female, set up in a variety of positions so that attendees could see how human skeletons, muscles and organs connect to each other and how they work together to keep us alive. I remember being struck by the intricacies of the different systems and how a problem in one area would affect other body parts as well. In all, the space was filled with sights that non-medical students and professionals would never be exposed to otherwise. Continue reading “The Missing Piece From the Abortion Debate”

Looking for Answers Before Bed

Brian couldn’t sleep.

He lay awake in bed, doing his best to ignore the episode of “Friends” airing on television, hoping to fall asleep. He was sure his daughter would make her way into the bedroom at any moment and climb into the bed, which meant he’d have to choose between staying in bed and getting assaulted all night by his toddler or move to the couch to give his daughter and his wife more space.1 His thoughts had slowed somewhat but he recognized the familiar weight that they still seemed to hold.

The day had been full of contradictions and confusion, an odd mix of positivity and borderline despair, as many days had been recently. Continue reading “Looking for Answers Before Bed”

Doing the Work During Black History Month

I was nine or ten years old when I met Larry.

He was younger than me by a few years but I remember being struck by how small he was. I think he was only six, but I was still surprised that the top of his head barely reached my shoulders. He had a short buzz cut, within a centimeter or two of his scalp, a toothy smile and significant difficulty pronouncing the letter “L,” which meant that I spent a good ten to fifteen minutes wondering what kind of parents would name their son Warry. He lived up the block from me in a small, freestanding house with his parents and older brother.

He was also the first black child I remember meeting. Continue reading “Doing the Work During Black History Month”

Make Your Voice Heard With Rock the Vote

I blushed when she asked the question.

It was my first semester of graduate school and I was sitting in a class devoted to theories of human behavior. It was later in the semester and we had covered a number of different theories. Each theory used a different approach and focused on a different aspect of people’s lives, from the ways infants develop attachments to adults’ desires for self-determination to the ways that people perceive reality in general. It was my favorite class of the two years I spent working toward my degree, rivaled only by the more informal discussions of philosophies and their impacts on social work practice during my independent studies.

On that day, a classmate had raised his hand. He was confused about the goal of our studies. He was struggling to understand how we, as budding social workers, were supposed to use all of these different and, sometimes, contradictory theories during our work with clients. Continue reading “Make Your Voice Heard With Rock the Vote”

How to Be a Man in Scary Times

It’s a scary time, he says.

He stands at the microphone, a preacher in front of his congregation, a cold, defiant smile on his face. He gesticulates as he speaks, waving to the masses and shaking his fist in the air to emphasize his point. His forehead glistens slightly, though it’s hard for me to tell if the sheen is a result of tiny beads of sweat from the spotlights or the oils from a low-quality spray tan. The crowd cheers in response, drinking in his charisma as if it has been forty years in the desert and he is the land of milk and honey.

I’d rather stay thirsty, I can’t help thinking. Continue reading “How to Be a Man in Scary Times”

The Morning After: Revisited

Tuesday of this week was Election Day, which means that Tuesday was the day last year when Donald Trump was elected President.

I felt a twinge in my stomach as I was going through my Facebook memories that morning. I saw the picture my family took shortly after my wife and I had voted for Hillary. Three of our faces were lit up with the smiles of people who had executed their civic duty 1 and who had played a part in electing the first female Commander-In-Chief (it was only three smiling faces because S just looked like she wanted to go back home).  Continue reading “The Morning After: Revisited”

High Stakes

Dear E and S,

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately.

It’s a dangerous pastime, I know,1 but it’s one of the reasons I haven’t published a new post in around three months.

I’ve had a couple of posts that I’ve started and then scrapped. There was the one about it taking a village to raise a child that had to do with the grandmother at the beach club who gave me a suggestion that helped S stop screaming so I could get her to take a nap in her stroller. There was the one about watching E grow over the course of the summer and watching the transitions he made during his first year at summer camp. There were a few about the ways you two interact together, some about our community of friends in our neighborhood and more than a few about the different events in our political sphere.  Continue reading “High Stakes”

The Conversation is Still Worth Having

I came across an article on HuffPost the other day about what it’s like to have a conversation about politics in America. The author, Kayla Chadwick, stated that there are fundamental disagreements between people about the way our government should run and to what degree people should care about the welfare of their fellow citizens. These disagreements have then resulted in the ongoing arguments and bickering about healthcare legislation, tax reform and immigration law, among others.  Continue reading “The Conversation is Still Worth Having”

Speaking My Mind

It was just short of a year ago that I wrote a post about keeping my political opinions to myself.  I wrote that I had no interest in publicizing my views of governmental policies or the personalities that were advocating for them, largely because doing so felt like screaming at the wind. It seemed futile to publish articles about foreign policy or health care or education reform because I never felt like my voice would have any effect. I’m only one person, of course, and it is always hard to tell if anyone is listening. I pictured myself publishing a blog post and my words dissipating into the ether of cyberspace, without any response or recognition. Or, if there were recognition, I imagined it manifesting in the form of internet trolls hurling insults at me from the protection of Twitter egg avatars, rather than challenging my argument with an opposing opinion and engaging me in honest discourse. It’s not even that I’m looking for recognition with this blog;1 but if I’m going to write about something as important as the state of our government, I want to be able to make a difference.  Continue reading “Speaking My Mind”

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