When I was 10 years old, I started taking karate classes, held in the evening at the local junior high. I loved it. I was young, flexible, and energetic, but more important, I loved my sensei, Grand Master Mumeet Shareef. A black Muslim in his mid-fifties, he could bench-press a couple of hundred pounds, treated …
Continue reading “Bad Dads We Love: Substitute Father Figures”
There was a moment on last night’s season premiere of Lost that was particularly amusing to me. In the new, alternate universe that the Losties’ H-bomb detonation appears to have created, Jack Shephard et al. land safely in LAX and begin to go about their lives. But as he’s waiting for his luggage to arrive, …
The other night, my wife, Jean, stood at the entrance to our bedroom with an unhappy look on her face—unhappy, but also helpless. From behind the nearly closed door to our daughter Sasha’s room came an unearthly wail, the sound of a 14-month-old baby who absolutely did not want to be in bed. Of course, …
Continue reading “The Tantrum: Is Sleep-Training Evil, or a Necessary Evil?”
When the Texas state Board of Education last week banned Brown Bear, Brown Bear, the beloved (if slightly repetitive) children’s book written by Bill Martin Jr. and illustrated by Eric Carle, most of us said: WTF? It soon became clear that a Board of Ed member had done a cursory Google search and discovered a …
Continue reading “Q&A: Bill Martin, Bill Martin, What Do You See?”
