Short Kids, Long Flight

Actually, it’s not just a flight. Due to the vicissitudes of the global economy and our resulting (and oddly unshakable) penury, the best and cheapest way to transport the family from New York to northern Germany, where we will spend some vacation days relaxing with old friends in Vorpommerania, is this: flight from New York …

The Miseries of Cursive

The day I learned to write cursive was the day my handwriting—and probably all semblance of fine motor control over drawing implements—died. It was 1982 or 1983, and I was living in Brighton, England, an 8-year-old temporary American transplant to the British state school system. Until then, I’d learned, as most kids do, to write …