This piece was written before the pandemic started and copy-edited and completed this fall and winter. Many thanks to Polly Saltonstall and her staff at…
“Effective at 8 p.m. on Friday, April 17, 2020 any individual who is over age two and able to medically tolerate a face-covering shall be…
In New York City, the constant sound of sirens is something you build immunity to, just like the smell and the congestion. We live here…
This is a story that was a long time in the making: it reached its best incarnation this summer and appropriately landed here: http://failbetter.com. She named…
This story appeared in the Winter 2019 issue of Glimmer Train. “She thought maybe this will help. Stop in Eureka, before I get home. Maybe…
I sat on my couch Sunday morning, knowing I had something better to do. It wasn’t much, just writing letters to infrequent voters, something I…
On the beach in front of my mother-in-law’s house in Rincon, Puerto Rico, are three almond trees. When we arrived to visit in February, months…
In the spring of 2016, I worked with Bristol Myers Squibb to help create a brochure that illustrated the company’s progress in meeting its sustainability…
My wife and I have been traveling to the Northwest corner of Puerto Rico for more than twenty years. First as part of our courtship…
This story appeared in the Fall, 2016 issue of Construction. Anna had been asked to bring wine. It was what she did, after all. Each…
Writing is an act of imposture. You are either pretending to be someone else (when you write fiction) or writing in a voice that is…
Kansas City, Kansas — In Rachael Mcilvaine’s eighth grade science class at West Middle School here, a chatty but focused group of three takes turns…
President Obama recently called on the Muslim Community “to think about how we make sure that children are not being infected with this notion that…
In her six years as the social worker at El Dorado Elementary in San Francisco, Jennifer Caldwell has witnessed significant change. “It’s a lot calmer,”…
Another short story about a car ride, but this one quite different. It appears in Raritan’s Summer 2015 Issue. She got into the car. As…
This is another car ride story, but this time of a very different nature. It ends up in the town that is the focus of…
This is a short story I wrote about a romantic car ride. It was the story of the week at Short Story America, February 18,…
This short story was written in the wake of 9/11. It appeared in Confrontation 96/97 in fall 2006/2007. ______________ On the day of the tragedy,…
This story appeared in Northwest Review, Volume 39, Number 2, 2001. ________________ But our contractor says, “Jerry, please.” And of course I say yes, because…
This is a short story I wrote about a group of teenage girls. It appeared in Pank Magazine, in April 2009. __________ Sempe has a…
This is a short story I wrote about a lost cell phone. It was published in Pank Magazine in October 2008. ______ She got into…
Soon after James Ponce became superintendent of McAllen Independent School District in Texas, in May 2009, he assembled a cadre of educators, students, parents, and…
Last year, Melody Arabo had the hardest year of her 13-year teaching career. The program she and her colleagues had been given to teach third-grade…
Americans get the inventions we deserve. The ironically named smartphone is a perfect example. And let me say at the outset that I am American…
In the view of Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, in Washington, D.C., there’s something particularly American about recovering high…
Two students Ron Walker encountered while working as a young teacher in Philadelphia led him to start the Coalition of Schools Educating Boys of Color.…
In January 2013, Joshua Starr, Ed.M.’98, Ed.D.’01, the superintendent of Montgomery County [Md.] Public Schools, was walking through New York City’s Central Park when the idea hit…
Working together as DPI Creative, Designer Deirdre Reznick and I created a web site for the wonderful “design build” interior design company Mind/Hand. To explore…
When Victor Lee was studying pharmacology as a pre-med student at Stony Brook University, he was sure of one thing in terms of a career…
Commonwealth students tend to be a remarkably creative bunch–from studio to classroom, students are encouraged to make unexpected connections and then follow these new ideas.…
One thing is clear: David Lorsch ’88, vice president of strategy and business development at Strava, Inc., a social media platform for athletes, did not…
Just a few blocks from the Supreme Court, in downtown Washington, D.C., on the first floor of the Georgetown University Law Center, there is a…
Here is the second of the three installments designer Deirdre Reznik and I created chronicling the first modules of Teachers College’s new XMA program. This…
Some years ago, Lalitha Vasudevan spent the summer knocking around West Philadelphia with a group of fifth-grade boys, ostensibly making a mock horror movie. Vasudevan,…
It’s early summer and ordinarily about now, my elder daughter would be preparing for camp. But not this year. Instead, she’s starting an internship, learning…
The other day I went and got a service. An item I own had malfunctioned, at least according to a light on its dashboard. I…
I know how Amare feels. The Heat, for all their talent, are a bunch of jerks. Lebron is a whiner and a flopper and a…
One of our doormen died suddenly last year around Christmas. A few years older than me, a heavy smoker, Raoul had been a DJ in…
The great thing about the Jeremy Lin story is that it’s not manufactured. It’s real. And as a result no one quite knows what to…
IN A RECENT ISSUE OF MONITOR ON PSYCHOLOGY MAGAZINE, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn was reported to be “giddy with excitement.” The cause: She and her colleagues are…
In the window of Citarella on the Upper West Side, a flag had been created out of shrimp and other fish. Above it, was the…
As the president battled with a recalcitrant Congress, and the Republicans, claiming to represent a conservative constituency, had us hurtling further toward financial oblivion, the…
I don’t often get up to Harlem. Recently I was sent up for an assignment to write about some graduate students who are volunteering to…
This is a story about jazz impresario, teacher extraordinaire and TC Doctoral student Victor Lin. It appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of TC Today.…
Sometimes New York surprises. Just when you think it’s going to behave according to form — turn out to be exactly the way outsiders see…
This is a piece I wrote for American Express’ internal publication, Context. It appeared in the summer, 2008 issue. ____________ When Rohit Berry thinks of…
This is an article about TC’s Integrated Early Childhood Program. It appeared in the Winter 2010 issue of TC Today. ______________ Every day in the…
I’m a regular at a coffee establishment in my neighborhood; I consider the table facing the doorway my office away from my office. The manager…
Why Rag and Bone was praising Café Colonial: they were preparing to take over their old space. It’s not their fault. But this is the…
It’s hot. People are dealing with this with various levels of success. Some spend their day running from air conditioning to air conditioning. Developing a…
For years I wrote regularly for Bristol-Myers Squibb’s internal communications website Intouch. Here is a profile I wrote of senior Bristol-Myers Squibb executive Mike Seeley.…
This is an article on one of the college’s most fundamental programs. It appeared in the Spring, 2010 issue of TC Today. _______ In a…
As part of years of work for the company’s internal communications website InTouch, I wrote this series on the company’s global travel department, which appeared…
Lebron is coming. Someone showed him an apartment in the Time Warner Center. Someone else showed him a townhouse in the Village. Our sportswriters are…
This is part of a series of stories I wrote on organizations collaborating with Bristol-Myers Squibb to support Lance Armstrong and his Tour of Hope…
This is an internal communication I wrote supporting Deloitte’s diversity efforts. It was circulated on Veteran’s Day, in 2003. __________________ Marketing Manager Eric Lambert’s computer…
This is an article about outsourcing school system management that was written for the 2009 Teachers College Annual Report. It includes discussion of the phenomenon…
This article was written for the Teachers College Annual Report for 2009. It is about how the Obama administration at the urging of experts including…
This article appeared in the Spring 2008 issue of TC Today. Anna Johnson was a junior at Wesleyan University in Connecticut when she got interested…
This article appeared in the Spring 2007 issue of TC Today. Last spring Teacher’s College’s academic programs related to health worked together to formulate a…
This article appeared in the Fall 2006 issue of TC Today. Ira Weston, Principal of Paul Robeson High School for Business and Technology on Albany…
As a regular writer for Bristol-Myers Squibb, I was given the responsibility of helping to manage and produce several brochures, among them this one reporting…
One of my favorite moments as a writer for Bristol-Myers Squibb was the creation of this diversity brochure, which merged design and purpose towards a…
This is a story about childbirth, among other things. It appeared in the Summer 2000 issue of the Laurel Review. _______________ “Hey,” my neighbor says…
These are three examples of the newsletter Beauty & Beyond, which I edited for Clairol from 1997 to 2001. I wrote all of the stories…
This is another of several stories that explore the material that became my novel, “Ghost Road.” This story appeared in the spring, 2000 issue of…
This is one of several short stories I wrote from the material that is now my novel, “Ghost Road.” This story appeared in the Fall,…
In September 1997, my essay on being a freelancer and a Dad appeared in Family Fun. Please see Man of the house.
Hacker basketball players are not used to flashes of greatness. In April 1997, my essay on an unusual night in the career of a certain…
This is a short story about three friends which appeared in the summer, 1996, issue of The Laurel Review. ________________________ He begins by apologizing. “Right…
This was my first published short story after college. It takes place in a car dealership and appeared in the Spring/Summer 1996 issue of Confrontation.…
When Elaine Jones took over as director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in January of 1993, she said she didn’t intend to…
For a transplant, there was something both comforting and embarrassing about the appearance on Broadway of a satellite of the famous Boston mainstay Filene’s. In…
In the early nineties, I wrote regularly for the New Yorker’s Goings on About Town section, doing short pieces about unusual outdoor sculpture that appeared…