March 6, 2026
I feel as if I have two personalities, one which speaks English and one which speaks Japanese. The one which speaks English can never get past being a high school geek. The one which speaks Japanese cannot get past being a “strange foreigner.” The only time I feel comfortable now is when I am teaching. Only there can I be an actor and change who I am any time I want.
January 4, 2024
Last night I had a strange dream…
I was home, arguing at the dinner table. It was as if I were a teenager again. I’ve often dreamed of living in a bedroom with no ceiling over half of it, open to the night sky, with a solid rock wall on one side and sliding doors on another. This seemed to be the same house. Something like the house in Warrensburg, but somehow different. In other dreams, this house has slowly risen upward as if it were a growing tower of stone.
In this dream, I was at the dinner table. Then, suddenly I was on the back porch. It still looked like the “room” that had been set up for me when I was sleeping on the back porch between my freshman and sophomore years. Except in the dream, there was little furniture, no freezer, no old TV from my grandparents, just an old bed and some curtains. I was able to look through the kitchen wall and see the insides of the house, decrepit and broken plaster and wood.
I went to the barn to get my bicycle, and somebody came running up behind me just as I was about to leave the back yard. “Where is my bow and arrows?” I asked. He handed me a bow, but no arrows. I sped off down the side path to the street, and suddenly I was bicycling past the triangle park. Only it turned into a much large city-style park with large dumpsters and vending machines. A dump truck charged toward me, and as I veered away, it lurched back toward the park and disappeared.
Then I felt a pain in my mouth. Lifting a hand to my front teeth, I pulled out a large square and knew that my incisors had been removed.
September 13, 2023
Sometimes I wish I could put my thoughts directly onto paper. I think all the time, about everything…I see pictures in my head, pictures of my past — exact details of what I saw and experienced. Déjà-vu often occurs to me. It’s strange, that feeling of already having been someplace. Sometimes I can tell what’s going to happen in a matter of minutes. I can’t stand things like that — they send chills up my spine.
September 6, 2018
Since I wrote about an ancestor on my father’s side (one of his side’s anyway) from the 1920s, I thought the next story to introduce should be from someone on my mother’s side, from roughly the same time period.
But one generation later. And with a theme of religious intolerance. And possibly related to 19th century Irish-American history. Continue Reading
September 3, 2018
My family name is Apple, but I am not related to anyone by that name.
Well, legally, yes. And by marriage. But genealogically no. So the old adage is definitely NOT true. At least not genetically.** Continue Reading
May 11, 2017
A joint Nara Chapter-ER SIG Event DATE: Sunday, June 18th VENUE: Yamato Conference Hall TIME: 10.00 a.m. — 4.30 p.m. Speakers: (1) Ann Mayeda Integrating ER into the Curriculum (2) Paul Goldberg The benefits of doing extensive reading online with Xreading (3) Mark Brierley How to persuade them to read (4) Ann Flanagan ER: Building […]
via All You Ever Wanted to Know About ER — Nara JALT
I’m an educator. And also a reader. And of course a writer.
“I cannot live without books.” (Thomas Jefferson)
We cannot educate without books. If you’re in Japan, stop by Nara on June 18th and find out how we can help our students enjoy reading.
November 8, 2016
As I sit here in front of my computer late at night, on the verge of the 2016 US presidential election, I’m struck by the choice I had to make. Two different versions of a future US society: one that invites multidiversity and multiethnicity in all their chaotic, unpredictable combinations, and one that shuts the door and preserves a traditional us vs them, insider vs outsider mentality.
By all rights, I should support the latter. I’m from a small town of less than 3,000 inhabitants, close to 99.99% white, deep in the heart of Upstate New York. I grew up surrounded by people who basically looked like me, enjoyed camping and hiking, canoeing and fishing, playing baseball and football and video games. Driving. A lot. I did yard work when I was old enough to get my working papers (back then, you didn’t get your social security number until you applied for it after age 14). In the spring, I helped my father in the garden. In the summer I mowed lawns. In the fall I raked leaves. In the winter I shoveled driveways. In high school, I had a part-time at a local pizza place, then at McDonald’s, then washed dishes in a nearby town. All our customers were white. All of them spoke English. It was all just fine, everybody looking the same and acting the same. Everybody just like me. Continue Reading
March 30, 2015
With only one week to go before the regular MLB season begins, I thought I’d go back and take a look at my old baseball pictures.
Only it turned out that I only had one: a tiny black and white picture of me standing at third base that appeared in my high school yearbook. Proud baseball Poppa to the rescue!
My father dug up about eight photos of me as a gangly 16 year old, doing what I did best that year: protecting the left bench from foul balls.
I also got really good at keeping score. When I wasn’t standing in right field while it snowed. Spring in the Adirondacks: we never played any of our scheduled games the first week of April, and even during the second and third week games typically featured flurries, sub-freezing temperatures, and rock-hard dirt surfaces to bounce on…ah, slide on when stealing second. Even now in my hometown, there are three feet of snow on the field, and I’m sure the players are tired of practicing inside the gym (the parking lot is also a favorite for ground-ball drills). Continue Reading
March 1, 2015
One criticism that came early in the workshopping of what turned into Approaching Twi-Night was the fact that several of the players went to college. “Everyone knows that baseball guys go straight from high school,” was a typical comment (not an exact quote, mind you; this was something like 18 years ago). “Athletes wouldn’t use this kind of sophisticated language” was another. (This was in regard to descriptions in some of the alternating chapters that don’t use quotation marks for dialogue and call the main character “John” instead of “Ditch.”) So, uh, athletes are dumb? Pardon me for breaking the (undeserved, insulting) stereotype. Continue Reading
February 19, 2015
Spring training is here at last! Well, for pitchers and catchers, anyway. The full teams won’t show for another week. But the phrase “pitchers and catchers report” still has a special meaning for baseball players, and fans, too.
I started Approaching Twi-Night in a spring training setting partly because of my personal experience with spring training. I played baseball in high school for four years and only once did I attempt to attend the early spring training session for pitchers and catchers. I say “tried” because, quite obviously, I was not successful. Continue Reading
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