I am not a big fan of the “Hey, remember when this happened X years ago today?” messages that various social media services and other Internet platforms send to me. On top of not always being accurate (like photo services that send me messages about the stock photos that came preloaded on my tablet), those memories often end up being things I’d rather not remember. Sometimes the memories are welcome, or the bad memories come with some kind of silver lining (like seeing the support…

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It’s not like leaves turning yellow and falling off of trees when it was still (technically) summer never happened to me when I was living in Ohio, but it was unusual to notice any widespread colour changes until at least the first days of October. One of the hardest adjustments I’ve had to make since moving to Wisconsin is just how much earlier that shift happens here, even though I’m not living that much farther north than I did before. Some of the trees on…

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The first nine months I lived in this apartment, I had to deal with at least two dozen false fire alarms. The first of these came before I even began teaching in Wisconsin, waking me up in the middle of the night and instantly plunging me into fear that taking the job offer here would wind up being one of the biggest mistakes of my life. By the time that autumn was over, even the loudness and shrillness of this building’s alarms had become blasé…

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