House on the Rock

My dad, though adopted, is the biological grandson of an Italian immigrant, I believe, named Fredrich Sabatini. I feel quite certain he has died, on account of the Fred Sabatini Memorial Scholarship I found online, but can’t seem to locate any sort of obituary. Perhaps it’s like the summer I worked at our city pool - the same city where they just built a downtown plaza and relied on the community to help name it. Our entire lifeguarding staff voted on the name of our boss at the time, followed by Memorial Plaza. She wasn’t dead, and we didn’t even mean it as a bad omen, but she cut our hours and the plaza is called Pike Place.  Anyway, I have many questions about the Fred Sabatini scholarship, but all I can gather is that he was a Logansport lawyer, and maybe he’s not dead after all. What I do know, however, is that whatever trace of Italian blood flows through my veins has left me with a semi-permanent pasta craving, remedied only by America’s favorite inauthentic Italian bistro: ...

I still remember my first bunion. It came after a trip to Belize, when I had taken over a month off of exercise and then jumped right into daily running and lifting. The shoes I had at the time were ill-fitting, which shaped the bones in my foot into a pointy and painful “protuberance” as Michael Scott would say.  I tried numerous remedies for said bunion: ice, rest, open-toed shoes, breaks from running…but the pain persisted, and the bump became a boulder. Brooks were no longer cutting it as running shoes. It was time to try something New.  So I got a pair of New Balances. I always heard that if you see something at the store that you like, don’t buy it right away: see if you can’t stop thinking about it, and then buy it. Such proved to be true with my shiny gray cushioned-soles that expanded wide enough for my blooming bunions to do their morning stretch. I thought about them for four months before finally going back and making the purchase, and it was almost as though I fin...

As a present-day Hamilton County dweller, I would be remiss to not rank the roundabouts that have traced traffic in circles around our town. Hamilton County, Indiana is the roundabout capital of the nation, boasting nearly 200 circular vehicle routes that slow traffic but don’t stop it, although ironically, the process of building the roundabouts across the county can halt traffic for up to an hour at a time. This rebuilding requires rerouting which results in bumper-to-bumper backups down 31 and Oak Road, making us wonder if the work is worth it but trusting the process nonetheless.  My perception of roundabouts was not unlike my perception of dogs. First, I feared them. Then, I realized that if you get to know them, they’re not so bad. Next, I realized you must still proceed with caution, for they can be reckless and unpredictable. Finally, I decided that I don’t mind them…I get the point…I just don’t think everyone HAS to be all about them. This was reiterated by a letter to the...

  In the spirit of The Anthropocene Reviewed, I have a hankering to review some products in my life. My hopes are that by writing a review of various faculties of my day-to-day existence, mundane will move to remarkable.  However, I still have to fend off the ever-present tug of plagiarizing, which means I ought not fall into the temptation of ranking items with one to five stars like John Green did. Instead, I’ll pick ten things in my life - average, run-of-the-mill, completely normal things which I (at worst) tolerate and (at best) adore. And I’ll rank them. Worst to best. The trick here is that my list is not yet complete. Which means I have to pick one thing in my life - not necessarily a bad thing, but not the best thing either - a perfectly average thing - as the starting point. And I have to make sure that the next thing is a slightly better thing than the last thing. Sort of ESPN Top Ten style, the items I’m ranking will gradually get better, leading up to the grand re...

You might have noticed I concluded my last post with "I give it four stars." You might have found that odd. You might be wondering whether my dialogue has morphed into Amazon-review style lingo. The fact of the matter is that I have just finished reading a book by John Green, one of my all-time favorite authors, called The Anthropocene Reviewed, which thoughtfully and cleverly expounds upon components of the anthropocene, this present geological era in which humans inhabit (and sometimes destroy) (and sometimes greatly benefit) the Earth.  Throughout the book, which was mostly written during the Covid shutdown and into spring of 2021, he reviews a wide variety of products, places, experiences, and tendencies of the human era as we live in the world. Every chapter is a review, and every review ends with "I give it __ stars," on a 1-5 scale, as he relates that particular thing to the larger scale of its place in society.  For example, he reviews Monopoly and talks abo...

 We're in the midst of the pinnacle of every teacher's teaching career: Spring Break. This is, after all, why we do what we do -- it's not for the kids. It's for that early-April grading hiatus where the lucky head south and the less-so stay settled for some rest. It's ten days of pure, uninterrupted bliss, R & R, mindless piddling and planning nothing. I'm kidding, of course, but the days leading up to April 1st do make Spring Break seem like a bit of an oasis after years at sea.  Joe and I were sort of a spicy mixer between the lucky and the less-so, heading South for just four (wonderful) days before coming back and getting rest but also getting things done: fixing broken bike tires, new phones, hair appointments, and all the other easy-to-put-off tasks that become backburned amidst the bustle of school.  Florida, in a word, was a rollercoaster. Perhaps a more honest reflection is that I was a rollercoaster, but as I reminisce on our four days on the forg...

  I’m here in Creative Writing Club, a small club I sponsor where 12-15 teenagers sit in a circle and write about whatever prompt we vote on that day. This week’s special is “What does your future look like?” So blog world, meet creative writing club. In the future I picture having a bit of a limp, possibly from that 13.1-mile marathon when I barely trained because I had signed up for it two years prior when I was in tip top shape - the shape of my life - only to have two Covid-postponed setbacks that found me in 2022, with one month left in my first year of teaching and more bound to pounds than I had ever been before. It was the year I tried to go on walks after school but also comfort-ate frozen pizzas by the triple stack and sat on the couch from dinner to dusk. We tried the Whole30 but didn’t make it nearly long enough to see measurable differences or really feel fit, plus I was more angry and more than ever, aware of my dependence on food for joy. So anyway, there’s the limp....

There's an Instagram challenge floating around where people are posting a picture with five of their favorite things listed as the caption. I'm taking a temporary insta hiatus (for reasons I might describe in a future post) but I also feel like writing. It's been a few full-speed weeks of hustle and I think it might be healing for me to write a similar caption, only in blog form. I always love looking back on fads I fancied at a certain point in time, so here's another one for the archive: 1. The promise of Spring. Cue Chris Renzema's Springtime on full blast as I drive with windows down and the heat all the way up. It's still not warm enough to really be comfortable outside, but it's warm enough to pretend, and perhaps in so doing we'll will spring into existence. I've also been really drawn to the metaphor of new life dawning; the resurrection of all things that comes after a season of darkness and death. It's no wonder Easter is celebrated in ...

Some days I feel very much like writing with nothing much to say at all. That is a  little bit true of today, although I am reflecting on a lesson learned that has overwhelmingly helped my mornings become the highlight of my  day. I am stretching by all measures to avoid sounding self-righteous, and want to fervently remind myself and my readers that this is a  miraculous extension of God's grace, nothing I am able to do by my own power. It's also helpful if I first point out  my sinfulness. Reflecting all the way back to Christmas break, my spiritual life has been a season of drought. Busyness breeds callousness; winter makes my soul sad and slow to see God's splendor; and I oftentimes find myself using devotionals as nothing more than a break from grading or lesson planning. Our small group got a new devotional book and I thought, "this will change everything!" only to find that I didn't connect with the author's writing style and the devotional left me ...

Rumors of a winter storm were creeping into every conversation and newscast; emails about E-learning permeated our inboxes and students and teachers alike grew quite hopeful that this snowstorm would actually surmount. The crazy thing about Indiana is they could predict 1 inch and we'd get 30; they might encourage us to hunker down for nothing but a meager frost.  Much to our surprise and excitement, the phone call came on Tuesday evening: School is closed. We packed up our Settlers of Catan board and headed to Ross and Reyna's, thankful that 8pm on a Tuesday was no longer a school night. Reyna pulled off a surprising "dub" with a last-minute Victory Card pickup and we celebrated with Steak 'N Shake milkshakes, eagerly anticipating whatever weather may come.  Strangely, Wednesday brought a warm rain akin to early April days. It rained and rained, so much that puddles flooded into rivers that ran Nile-like toward the parking lot drain. "It'll freeze,"...