Tag: nostalgia
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When we all were farmers
I was chatting with a colleague yesterday, and he was reminiscing about his summers as a kid, visiting his relatives’ farm in Vandergrift Pennsylvania – only about a thirty minute drive from where I grew up. His stories about playing in the barn with bales of hay brought me back to the days when all […]
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Best Christmas Gift (sort of)
When I was a boy, one of the greatest and memorable days of every year was when the Sears Christmas Catalogue arrived in the mail. The full-color pages created a wonderland of wishes for this starry-eyed country boy. They had it all: the latest toys, games, and sports equipment. They even sold the full sets […]
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A Railroad Trail
Three hundred yards behind the house where I grew up was a railroad track. Now its a beautiful bike trail. The railroad tracks provided an important hub of activity of my childhood. It was a small, rather insignificant line which traveled from Butler PA to Freeport and beyond, but as a young boy, it […]
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Sally, Where are you?
I’ve been rummaging through boxes of old mementos, and I came across a letter from a former student of mine. Here name was Sally. That’s not her real name. She’s Chinese from Dalian where I spent the summer of 1993. I remember her well. She taught me to play Chinese chess, which I have since forgotten. […]
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Endings Affirm Meaning
An ending knows what it does. It also knows what it means. An ending forces one to divorce the beautiful. It brutally parts the ways with an uncomfortable finality. An ending sees the past clearly. Perhaps too clearly for comfort. And that is why an ending brings tears, regrets, wishes, and what-might-have-beens. But an ending […]
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Intersection of Meaning
I snapped this in Georgetown, Penang a while back. I suppose I was just be nostalgic. But what a meeting of forces. Kapitan is on Pitt Street. Two of the best. One one street. Amazing. Okay, explanation needed. Pitt – as in William Pitt – as in Pittsburgh, the city near and dear to me, […]
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The Reason is Now Clear
In this article “Mom is Shamed for Cake Slice in Kid’s Lunch,” I have begun to understand why the heavens didn’t want me to raise my kids in the United States. It would not have been pretty. And unfortunately, this article isn’t an outlier. There are (regrettably) way too many instances of schools telling parents what they […]
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What’s the Future of Complication Like?
I’ve been thinking about my recent blog post The Good Old Less Complicated Days and started wondering about my kids: will they look back upon the 2010s as the “Good Old Less Complicated Days?” The premise of my post was this: our modern world has become so complicated that I sometimes wonder if life before gadgets and […]
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The Good Old Less Complicated Days
My brain feels like it just experienced a two hour session as a tackle dummy, and no, it has nothing to do with having just watched the Oscars or network TV. It has to do with modern life. Silly old modern life. The kind of lives we lead in this day and age are insane, […]
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These are the moments we remember
Look closely at this photo. What do you see? I see memories which will last a lifetime. Not for me, no, but for that family of aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews, mothers and fathers. if you look closely on the center left, you’ll see two children playing in the sand at the edge […]
Author Mark W Sasse 