September 19, 2026
When we think about colonizing Mars, we usually imagine advanced spacesuits, dome cities, and massive terraforming projects.
Beyond Spacesuits: How Genetic Engineering Could Make Us Martian
Wish I had seen this writing prompt this past June! I could have written…
Well, probably something very similar to this. Only without the obvious use of AI.
Just think, though…this would be the beginning of a new species of human, the first in several hundreds of thousands of years.
Homo Martis?
July 16, 2026
Do you think we’re shaped more by our experiences or by who we are?
July 10, 2026
What’s a chapter of your life you’d title “The Hard Years” — and what got you through it?
I didn’t know the term “freeta-“ (from “free arbeiter” with “arbeiter” meaning “worker” in German) until I had lived in Japan as a teaching assistant for several years. Yet it occurred to me that that was the lifestyle I had been living after undergraduate school, even during the two misguided years of my creative writing master’s degree program when I worked at a nearby mall (at a software store that told me to lie to customers about software availability).
Not working as a full time worker but at a series of temporary part-time jobs, I felt free from restraints but had little money and even less chance of anything resembling a stable work life.
When you’re 22, this doesn’t seem that bad. You think it’s okay, that your whole life is ahead of you. That you’re still finding your feet.
By 27, it’s unsettling. That’s why I made the move to Japan, to take a risk and try my hand at teaching.
What got me through the “Hard Years”?
Guinness. Probably because I simply don’t know any better. It nearly derailed me. I was a ronin, awash on the waves of life. While floating from one job to the next in Boston.
In the end, maybe it was my colleagues and students in Japan that finally got me out of my morass. After making the move here, even though on the surface it was a temporary three-year contract, I needed to help someone else. Think outside myself, outside the box. and eventually, decide to make it a permanent lifestyle.
After all, helping others really does, in the end, help yourself.
June 24, 2026
Which languages do you speak and how did that impact your life?
I studied French from junior high through first year undergraduate.
I can’t speak it. I tried, but my teacher (MA from Tunisia) had to use a book based on Parisien French, even though my hometown is a stone’s throw from Québéc (not Paris!).
After failing to learn how to speak French, I switched to German in second year college. Borrowed money to go to Germany for a month that summer and met long-lost relatives.
Kinda could speak German. Forgot how to do so after leaving college. Nobody to talk to (and no reason to use it).
In my MFA program, I got bored by the “creative writing workshops” (wherein my classmates enjoyed sniping each other’s works). So I took up Irish Gaelic. Borrowed money (again) to visit An Gaeltacht (Conamara) near Galway, Ireland.
Marginal fluency. For a year. Forgotten just as quickly.
Two years later, I moved to Japan. Studied Chinese characters and Japanese grammar on my own primarily, with help occasionally from a Japanese colleague where I taught and a Japanese friend I made who ran a private English cram school.
After over 26 years, by far my strongest “second” (fifth) language.
So. How has language learning affected my life?
How has it not?
I am a language teacher. I am also a failed language learner. This has made me acutely aware of how hard it is for my Japanese students of English to use English, when on a daily basis they really have no need to do so. I respect them to no end.
Learning another language is hard. It’s especially hard when there’s no real reason to do so, when there’s no one to talk to in that language.
When it’s not really a part of who you are, as a person.
I had thought that, given my ancestry, French, German, and Irish would be good to learn. Turned out that wasn’t enough. I needed a real reason.
Someone to talk to.
I am now married to the love of my life, a Japanese woman who, like me, loves learning and teaching language. We have two wonderful daughters who likewise enjoy learning language.
Because we have a reason to learn them. People.
It’s all about people. Language is people. Not translation software, not AI. People.
Talk to me!
June 16, 2026
What is something you wish you could tell your 20-year-old self?
That by the time you are able to support a family, everyone on the planet will be just as geeky as you…with a mini-computer in their pocket 24/7, obsessed with scifi and super hero movies, and desperate to stay in the loop on the most recent multi-player game.
April 7, 2026
If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?
If I could, I’d be Columbo.
But if TV shows are out, then I’d be the Grandfather from The Princess Bride.
I pretty much already act like both anyway 😆
March 4, 2026
You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?
It’s only every so often that you die.
(Inspired by a legendary quote by former not-so-great Cubs catcher Rick Wrona about his first MLB hit.)
August 7, 2025
Seriously, this is an “NBC Select” article: https://www.nbcnews.com/select/shopping/how-to-clean-your-glasses-rcna175677
I wear glasses. I have worn glasses since I was in elementary school 2nd grade — the “aviator” style made of cheap plastic that I frequently broke during recess kickball games and then had to tape together so I could wear them.
I have never figured out how to keep my glasses clean in the subsequent four+ decades of my life.
But I seriously doubt this is “newsworthy.” Cringeworthy, maybe.
November 23, 2024
What book are you reading right now?
I finished re-reading all my Usagi Yojimbo books a couple weeks ago (I’m a big Stan Sakai fan), so I got the thought that I should read his inspiration, Musashi (Sakai’s main character is an anthropomorphic bunny named Miyamoto Usagi).
While I was reading Musashi, I also started a Japanese manga series about classic literature from 600 CE to the 20th century. I’m on the first volume of 今昔物語 (Konjyaku Monogatari, usually translated as “Tales of Times Long Past”).
Last week, I began reading volume one of The Arabian Nights (also called Tales of 1001 Nights). This is a more recent (2008) translation of the entire tales, not just a sampling of the more famous stories (e.g., Aladdin, Sindbad, Ali Baba etc.). It’s likely to take me, uh…1001 nights?
Tales within tales within tales…
June 25, 2024
What jobs have you had?
What jobs have I *not* had would be a better question.
Right…
This may not include some odds and ends here and there when I was in JHS and SHS. I worked a lot of summer jobs and Christmas/ New Year’s break jobs. I worked most weekends while I was a full time students, and most Friday evenings, too. I don’t recall the pay for all of them, but I remember the pizza dough job paid $3.15 an hour, and four years later McDonald’s paid a whopping $3.75 an hour.
You know, I’d be very interested to find out what jobs my colleagues have had. In college when I borrowed money to study abroad in Germany, my classmates wandered around Europe for the summer while I returned and had exactly $0 to my name and worked double-shifts. I wonder how many literature or history professors spent summer days getting burned on their arms with 400F cooking oil or getting yelled at by bankers because their document wasn’t printed fast enough…
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