or Thomas Joseph Wilson's Blog
I. No one needs to ask the origin of my neighborhood’s name: Deer Park. Deer walk the streets of Deer Park, Ohio, like humans have yet to take over. They are the living ghosts of nature, sleeping in front yards, staring at you with a tense readiness when you walk past. The penance the deer…
When the Paperless Movement was in full force, I was fatalistic. Going totally digital was inevitable. And like anyone who needs to prepare for a new world, I started readying my supplies, or, in this case, getting rid of them. As we now know, the Paperless Movement didn’t quite take. Though cardboard boxes are the…
The Question Through all of the various cultural arguments about what is offensive and who sees the world the right way, I have realized that a word has slipped through: “protein.” I think I first heard this neologism or reframed use of the word from some popular restaurant that will probably dawn on me as…
Reading for a Refresh Deep into the summer, yet a few weeks before school, the professional development books I stacked on the far reaches of my home desk morph from a thing to politely ignore to a an interesting to-do list. This year, I have a book about Socratic seminars, three books about writing, one…
Environmental Control Usually, when you grow up with something, like a childhood of enjoying not-so-pleasant looking ripe bananas–speckled oxidation brown, far from a pristine green or yellow–it becomes normalcy, a state of comfort and not-surprise. It’s eating around the mold. It’s sleeping without worrying that your body will roll out of bed onto the floor….
The Fears That Bind Us Coming up any sort of stairs was my greatest childhood fear. Sure, I wouldn’t be happy about going down to a dark basement: I’d race for the lights and move slowly around corners. But, for some reason, I felt like going upstairs was like defying a monster’s plan, like you…
The Industrial Nopes One of the reasons I became a teacher–and I know this is not what I should be saying–was so that I wouldn’t have to work in a cubicle. It was at the beginning of my teenagedom that I had suspected that the cubicle environment would not be my bag. I don’t remember…
I. Here I was, in the blizzarded-out mountains of Colorado in the 1800s, navigating a horse to some sort of hunting ground to score some deer for our starving party. A non-player character (NPC) made small talk with me while the game tried to clue me on things that it had already taught about riding…
The Phenomenon Let’s say you and some other smartphone owners have happened upon the topic of sanitary napkins. Sure, a niche topic, but we often happen unexpectedly on conversations about improving our daily tools: Tools are our species’s super powers. Anyway, someone in the group has found a new tissue brand that just owns, trounces…
My wife spread her arms as if to point out something egregious, something obvious and no-duh-ish. Her arms seemed to be indicating our living room. I scanned it. Nothing was amiss. I squinted. This was my way of letting her continue. “Your books,” she said. “Don’t you think this is hoarding? How many have you…