As I begin this post, I am sitting in Midway airport sipping Dunkin Donuts cold brew coffee as I groggily try to pull my thoughts together for a blog post. I will say that my latest adventures have left me far more tired than a teacher should be in late June. I was up late last night packing for a trip that will take me to Lexington Kentucky to visit my good friend Darya, to New Orleans for the North…
Confession time. I’m blogging from a coffee shop, but it is not new to me. It’s my staple coffee shop. In my defense, it has a perfect outdoor patio space, it’s a block from my apartment, the coffee is strong and cheap, and they make the most delicious chicken salad sandwich I have every eaten. Seriously. So now that I’ve polished off my lunch, I’m sipping my reasonably priced coffee and getting down to the business of blogging. It’s been…
Last week, the Dennehy School of Irish Dance held its annual recital at Gaelic Park in Midlothian. While our dancers perform year round at shows of every sort (weddings, fish fries, retirement parties, etc.) our recital is a true celebration of every dancer in the school – beginner to champion. I was helping to get dancers organized just before the show began when the owner of our school announced that it was time for the beginners to practice their number….
Today’s post will be a series of thoughts, musings, and snippets of stories all loosely connected by a place very near and dear to my heart – my gym. When I say “my gym,” I am actually referring to the Chicago Athletic Clubs, of which there are eight, two of which I frequent regularly enough to refer to them as “mine.” Those two are the Bucktown Athletic Club (BAC) and the Westloop Athletic Club (lovingly referred to by its patrons…
Yesterday, as I was pulling up outside the dance studio where I teach, I caught the tail end of a broadcast of This American Life. Ira Glass introduced a pair of young people in their early twenties who conducted a sort of social experiment. Seven days a week, for many hours a day, they stood on the streets of New York City holding a sign that said simply, “Talk to Me.” They were not selling anything or representing any charity….
Four years ago, I was about to turn 30. I was feeling lost and unmoored and decided to ground myself by doing something challenging. I felt the need to give weight to the final days of my twenties – they felt so fleeting, and I thought I could anchor myself to such a tenuous time by committing my moments to paper; by chronicling my final days of 29. So I wrote a blog. I called it Finding Something New: Thirty…