Fifty Years Gone By Now

There is a scene in Steven Spielberg’s movie Hook where one of the Lost Boys kneads and pulls at Robin Williams’ adult face until he finds the young Peter Pan inside. Last Friday I attended my 50th high school reunion, and two or three times that night I had a similar...

Chinese American is an Awkward Term in My House

Sometimes when I write about my wife and daughter’s heritage, I do not know whether to call them Chinese American, Taiwanese American, or Asian American. For different reasons, none of the terms quite work. Manyu would agree with me. When she is asked about her...

Falling a Little in Self-respect

I sometimes use minnows for fishing bait, but I never know what to do with the ones left over after a day on the water. I don’t want to just dump them into the river or the lake, because I am never certain whether they are native to that particular spot. I don’t want...

Is That One Word or Two?

Last week a cable guy and his son came to my house to bury an internet cable. The job was supposed to get done as soon as the frost came out of the ground, but because of a messed up phone call with the cable company service rep, it did not happen until July. The...

Staying Home Because I Have To

More than once I have rejected a potential blog entry because it sounded too much like Andy Rooney. Maybe I shouldn’t do that. I wish I wrote as well as Andy Rooney. Some of his witticisms are as good as anything by Mark Twain or Will Rogers. I just don’t want...
Steven Simpson