Even though I have two degrees from the University of Toledo, I only attended the graduation ceremony for the first one; the second coincided with a family event that my father wanted to go to, so I didn’t take part in that ceremony. (My father wanted to go to this family event because he was worried about his mother’s failing health, but ironically enough, she wound up outliving him by a couple of years.) There was a lot going on in my life when I…
Polar vortex death toll rises to 21 as US cold snap continues (BBC.com) I kind of get the old stereotype about older women who watch the Weather Channel non-stop, but I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable about it because, for much of her life, Mom was one of those women. After we first got cable television, news and information shows quickly became Mom’s go-to when there wasn’t anything else on; she kept the living room television tuned to either Headline News or the Weather Channel…
Polar vortex to bring prolonged, life-threatening cold outbreak to midwestern US this week (Accuweather) I’ve been thinking lately about how I’ll probably have to write a multi-volume memoir when the time comes for me to do that, simply because I have far too many bad memories indelibly stamped into my brain to just gloss over those events in a chapter or two. I’m guessing that I’ll need at least one whole book to describe all the horrible teachers I had when I was younger, and…
No more snow days: School district replaces wintry days with off with online classes (fox59.com) Back in 2014, when France made it illegal for companies to contact their employees about work-related business after six in the evening, a lot of pundits here in America used the opportunity to point out how the Internet, and the growing availability of powerful smartphones and tablets, were changing the fundamental nature of work and jobs. Plenty had already been written about how new technology was eating up people’s free…
A love of thunderstorms runs in my family, or at least on Mom’s side of the family. From my earliest days, before we even had cable so the Weather Channel could let us know what to expect and when (as much as weather forecasts are ever accurate), the arrival of a thunderstorm at our house often meant gathering in the living room, so we could look out the big windows as the clouds darkened and then flashed with lightning. Especially in the years before the…