Essays and ephemera
To The Democratic Party of DuPage County,
I am done with your emails. I am tired of the ugly fonts. I am tired of the long-winded emails where things are randomly capitalized, bolded, or italicized, causing me to lose the message in the sea of text. It’s 2017, not 1997. If you want people to be involved, then clean up and fix your communications.
Continue reading “Letter to the Democratic Party of DuPage County”
Note: In this occasional series, I’ll tell tales from my youth. Some will be about me, others about my friends. In this example, it’s the latter.
In high school I worked at the local Jewel grocery store. It was a pretty decent job; the hours were flexible and the pay we good. I never saw myself as a model employee, but compared to my coworkers I could be seen that way.
Continue reading “Tales from Adolescence: Kill Bill and Jewel”
Note: I know the author of the book reviewed in this post.
When it comes to politics, I want concise and salient talking points spoken by politicians and myself. Sadly, the former does not possess this and the latter possess more passion than saliency. In these times of polarization, I returned to John K. Wilson’s book How The Left Can Win Arguments and Influence People to see if talking points made almost 20 years ago hold up and to see if I could apply them to today’s political conversation. Sadly, they’re still relevant.
People always ask if I have kids. I used to reply “Just a dog.” A lot of people liked that.
Now that my wife and I are expecting, when asked the same question, I reply, “One on the way!” to which is almost always followed by, “Oh – is this your first?”
I think “one on the way” succinctly answers their question. If I had more than one, wouldn’t I reply ,”A two year old and one on the way” or “Yes. I have n many children”?
Every day I try to be a better writer. It would probably help if I wrote every day. While emails count, I feel they don’t let me flex my writing muscle.
I wanted a good grammar book to read. Something that was between diagraming sentences and Strunk and White. I recently read June Casagrande’s book It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences and found the book charming. In a breezy and conversational manner, Casagrande goes through the mechanics of good writing. I felt that for me, a busy professional, I was able to refresh my grammar without feeling beleaguered.
Continue reading “It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Blurst of Sentences”