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  All Lives Matter? Friday, August 28. Afternoon.     I’m sitting at my desk, deftly switching between my emails and the program that allows me to send and receive text messages on behalf of a political party I want to aid to win the 2020 election. I look at the clock. I have only […]

Learning, Kindness, and the French Horn       Me, learning “Brian, do you know what you did well there?” Jen perennially begins questions with my name. “No, Jen,” I reply, playfully, into the zoom camera in my office. Rhetorical questions amuse me. “Well, Brian, you have an intuitive sense of phrasing.” I think back

ANXIETY. NOT SO BAD?   Notes: This material is based on an interview I conducted with Brent Lyons, a PhD candidate at Oxford University studying the intersection of anxiety and religion While this technique provides an intellectual understanding of anxiety that can help some people, it’s not proven effective for all anxieties. Please seek professional

“I’m proud of you. You are taking two whole nights away, just for yourself,” I hear Larry say. I re-tuck the microphone of my headset into my facemask to muffle the wind for when I talk. “Larry, it’s more that they sent me. Is that better? Can you hear me better now?” It’s nice to

July 27, 2020   7:25pm   “Because a good number of healthcare workers and moms I know recommend double masking,” Jane explains as she writes 971-247-2072 on my right arm—should I need the National Lawyers Guild to bail me out.   Accordingly, I put a disposable paper mask one in my pocket for when I’m

Author’s Note “You can’t send this out,” Jane said at the kitchen table, reading as I drank my smoothie this morning. The hours and words I thought you were going to read, now that she’s saved me from a very likely error in judgment, gone. “I was afraid of that,” I said. I re-prioritize the semi-monthly, semi-personalized

The Program Setting Medford, Massachusetts, late fall 1991. My senior year. We forty residential advisors have been thirded from the lecture hall into the two nice and one not-so-nice of Tilden Hall’s classrooms for our monthly RA development program. My buddy Brian, Tufts’ Catholic society’s equivalent to me, and I pair up as impromptu, jovial group leaders in the large

  Talmud. Enraged and Loved.     Didn’t see it coming   I’m three classes from the end of my tenure as the substitute rabbi for a local, weekly Talmud class. I’m at the kitchen table preparing for tomorrow and excited to see that this tractate (chapter) of Berakhot (blessings) includes reference to one of my spiritual

Biking with Annie   On this, our second day of Camp Spend-the-Morning-with-Dad-Thanks-to-Covid-19, Emmett peels off to bike around the park to complete his exercise commitment. Now it’s just Annie and me pedaling down residential NE Hancock on our way to pick up my Father’s Day gift of new silicone baking mats from the kitchen store