“Turn and face the strain”, goes the 70’s Bowie hit about self-reinvention. [1] You get a pre-coffee jolt this morning when your visiting grand daughter asks you about that that red-eyed, mullet-frocked, tie-dyed image that your kind old “friend” drunk-posted in Facebook one night. (It’s not that bad of a shot, really—minus of course that background object in the likeness of a bong.) Now that you are Fox-News-following, Sunday-service-attending, Wall-Street-investing, Hair-Club-concealing grown-up, you sigh in relief—perhaps, in disbelief—at how much you’ve come round. You take that first gulp of coffee and stare down that snoopy nerd across the dining table: “It was a Halloween costume party, Sweetheart!” It has been a long, arduous and oft-times circuitous forty years to get to where you are now. Taken to an emergency text message, your grand inquisitor swiftly drops the subject. Taken to the thought of a more truthful answer, you also wonder... Continue reading

Emerging from a church basement thrift shop with my prized haul, I notice a van just pulling up behind my car. More bargain hunters, I thought. As I am about to pull out, an African-American lady’s face bobs down smiling at me through my right front window. Lost? Asking for directions? Do I know this woman? I lower my window. Vivian introduces herself in perfect metropolitan Tagalog [1]. I respond in the vernacular, challenging her into a light conversation. She holds her own. Sans good practice, I am ready to clutch on to my own to clarify a few things I am unsure of: How does she know the language? How does she know I would respond? Where are we going with this? Before I could speak further, she reaches deep into her handbag for a clasp of printed material. Oh, now I get it. We’re in front of her... Continue reading