Iris doesn’t have any real sense of what Harry Potter is, but she’s not immune to the phenomenon, either. When Half-Blood Prince came out, she pointed to the cover and demanded to know who these people were, and then she announced, “Potter! Dumble! Buddies.” Which is a pretty good book review. Last night, Laurie and I […]
This morning, despite the drizzle, Iris told me she wanted to go to Cal Anderson Park, known to her as The New Park because it opened last fall. I put on her boots and we headed to the park, where Iris immediately noticed a huge puddle. She did some stomping and dancing in the puddle, […]
You know the story about Pavlov and his dog? If I remember right, it went something like this. This guy Pavlov had a dog, and every time a bell rang, the dog got its wings. Wait, that’s not it. This guy Pavlov had a dog, and every time he rang the bell, he’d give the dog […]
French toast was one of the biggest treats of my childhood in Portland, OR. My mom would make it from thick-sliced sandwich bread and cook it in an electric frying pan that looked liked it dated from the dawn of electricity. There were two tricks to my mother’s French toast: putting half-and-half in the batter, and […]
Yesterday, while I was stirring my fish stock, my mind embarked unexpectedly on one of those wide-ranging ambles through the past. Come along, but be forewarned that an amble is just a ramble with one letter burned out. In 1998-99, Laurie was going to grad school at Teachers College of Columbia University, and we rented a […]