So today Dave Brubeck died, and when I heard the news I had to laugh to myself. There have always been two inside jokes that made Marty and me laugh since we got married, jokes which make no sense to anyone but us: "It's Brubeck" and "screensaver." Some backstory is in order, of course. When I was in college I did some "modeling," if you know what I mean....
Life as a psychiatrist in the City of Ottawa, Ontario, can certainly be more thrilling than I would have thought possible. My name is Minerva Suleiman and I'm a Lebanese Christian woman living in our nation's fair Capital. I moved to Ottawa from my hometown of Montreal, Quebec, after graduating from McGill University. I wanted some peace and quiet, after the...
My name is Alimah Amal Hassan. I was born and raised in the City of Al-Karameh in the Kingdom of Jordan. My family moved to the region of Ontario, Canada, about ten years ago. Today, I turn twenty two. I'm a third-year student at Carleton University in the City of Ottawa. I have a lot to be thankful for today. Seriously. I live in the greatest country in the...
I dated this knockout gal for about 6 months when I was in college. She lived with her parents in my hometown, and I lived in the other end of the state where I went to college. I've written several stories about her already here—"Feeling Kind Of Lucky," about meeting her at an outdoor jazz concert, she having her first group sex with me and my roommate on H...
Why was she here? Did she want revenge? Was she lonely, or even depressed? Or did she actually want me? I didn't want to ask her. What if she gave me the answer I didn't want to hear? That I was just being used by her to stop the pain, if only for a few seconds. I wasn't going to ask her, why would I? This is what I had wanted for as long as I had known h...
The sun rose over the town of Quartier Morin, about thirty miles from the major City of Cap-Haitien in North Haiti. It found Sebastien Renard in bed, sulking. The big and tall young Black man stirred restlessly. Another sleepless night. For the thousandth time he wondered what could have possessed his father, Boston Police sergeant Ernest Renard had left him...
The name is Lucien Bardeaux. I am a young Haitian-American law enforcement professional in the state of Texas. I make my living as a Border Patrol Agent. Recently, I've had an epiphany. I ran into this brave, fiery Mexican woman as she was crossing the border with her family. They told me they were fleeing a vengeful Mexican criminal overlord whom they had w...
There's a sort of parenting tactic called "Love & Logic" that we try to practice as much as we can with our children. It's all about natural consequences. This is what it says on their website: Children learn the best lessons when they're given a task and allowed to make their own choices (and fail) when the cost of failure is still small. Children's failur...
This editorial originally appeared under my real name in the newspapers I edit. The late historian William Manchester wasn't in the same class as David McCullough or others, but once in a while he would come up with some particularly good information. One example came in his never-finished biography of Winston Churchill, some years before he was thrust int...
A trip down memory lane for me, that's all -- nothin' more, nothin' less. Enjoy another peek into what makes me -- me. ~ Red * I lost the thrill of Halloween at an early age. I think I was seven years old when it became a nightmare of a holiday for me. I remember where I was at when it was no longer fun, but scary. My two older sisters and I had been going...