Category: Aspiration

Living by Joe WilcoxMay 13, 20071:49 pm

Thanks, Mom

I was 14 when my mother saved my life. It was, in fact, my 14th birthday.

Dad, mom, my three sisters, and I had gone to my grandparents house to celebrate. Nana made tasty pork chops, for which I had no appetite. For dessert, there was fresh baked chocolate cake—yum, my favorite—and actually two. I had no taste for cake, either. Instead, after picking at my food, I lay down on the couch. My sister Annette, who is closest in age to me, also was ill. We both had fevers, and I assumed that we shared the same flu.

Living by Joe WilcoxMay 11, 20078:44 pm

No Class, No Reunion

My 30-year high school reunion will take place this year—if it hasn’t already. But, sigh, I have no high school where to return. During my junior and senior years, my mom moved the family from the town where I grew up to Maine’s second-largest city in the south. While other kids wallowed in the memories, I walked the hallowed halls like an odd duck. I was a stranger among strangers. I left my memories and friends 300 miles away, in the town where I was born and there the school system that educated me. No memories. No prom. No graduation parties. No fun.

I regularly cut classes in the new school, which was quite unusual for me. I had bulked up on extra classes through junior year and was one-quarter credit shy of graduation going into my senior year. I only needed to sustain grades for college.

Living by Joe WilcoxMay 10, 20076:06 pm

The Modern Woman is You

When I was younger, the first rule of gifting to women: Never buy anything with an electrical chord. Girlie gifts, like jewelry and such were OK, but you would never buy a woman a chain saw, drill, or electric mixer. The mixer is especially risky, because of kitchen equipment and loaded connotations about she doing work there and her outside job, too.

But times change, and so does gifting. My wife wants an edger—or trimmer. She has asked for over two years now. I’ve resisted, in part because I don’t see why we need to trim the lawn’s edges and also because the noise would scare away wildlife. She does the yard work, I’ll admit, and she’s good mowing back the grass or whacking weeds.

Aspiration by Joe WilcoxMay 6, 20073:26 pm

Skating with a Cold on Ice

My daughter skated her second competition today. What misery. She sped onto the ice with nasty cold and cough, which limited her performance. She placed third out of five skaters. My daughter started serious skating in September 2006 and has quickly advanced through the Ice Skating Institute levels. She skated today at Freestyle 4 against other 11-12 year-old girls. She soon will be testing for the United States Figure Skating Associaton, hoping to join the local club.

I took out, for the first time, our new Canon HV20 camcorder, the family’s first new model since the original Elura in 1999.

Living by Joe WilcoxAug 24, 200611:37 pm

Learn From Thine Enemy

Yesterday’s New York Times story “Relief Agencies Find Hezbollah Hard to Avoid” touches on something I’ve been meaning to blog about for weeks.

One reason for Hezbollah’s success comes from working as a kind of government within the government of Lebanon by providing key social services. I don’t mean to defend Hezbollah insurgents, for my government views them as terrorists, but I also can’t ignore that the organization is doing something right: Serving the people.

Living by Joe WilcoxAug 21, 200612:12 am

Guatemala: One Year and Five Weeks

My sister’s sojourn in Central America continues, as she and husband Howie enter their second year as full-time missionaries.

Living by Joe WilcoxAug 20, 200611:40 pm

Summer What?

I am among the guilty.

Today’s New York Times story “The Rise of Shrinking-Vacation Syndrome” cites a startling statistic: “40 percent of consumers had no plans to take a vacation over the next six months—the lowest percentage recorded by the [Conference Board] in 28 years”. A May Gallup poll found that 43 percent of Americans planned no summer vacation. I’m among them.

Photo by Joe WilcoxJul 1, 200612:57 pm

Picture Me

For months, I’ve been meaning to blog about a New York Times story from—get this—February. But I wanted to include a self-portrait of my wife, which meant scanning and that was something I never seemed to get around to. Until today, while we waited on Bun Bun; she was sick and with the local vet.

The Times story, “Here I Am Taking My Own Picture“, is a hoot.

Living by Joe WilcoxJun 20, 20067:19 pm

Whom We Remember

Today would have been my mother-in-law’s 86th birthday, if she were alive. She died about 10 years ago, while my family was on 18-month hiatus back home in Northern Maine.

My wife wanted to celebrate, in part, because not enough birthdays were spent together. I saw the small remembrance as opportunity to express continuity of the generations to our daughter. My daughter never met her older grandmother (my mom—the younger grandma—is 64, but, sssh, don’t tell her I said so).

Living by Joe WilcoxApr 16, 200612:04 pm

Be Better Neighbors

Yesterday, I wore my Alienware T-Shirt, with the company’s logo on the front—an alien, of course. For some reason, I got several questions about it. So I said: “Well, this is my illegal alien. He’s afraid of getting sent back to his home planet, and I’m protesting with him.”

There’s truth to what I said. I’m unfavorable to the hardline US legislators are taking with this immigration bill. I just don’t see turning all these immigrants into criminals, or turning them away. As one of the sixth graders pointed out today in the Sunday school class I teach, most Americans are immigrants. And to the Native Americans here 400 hundred years ago, the off-continent settlers were the illegals and, as it turned out, invaders, too.

Living by Joe WilcoxApr 3, 20063:24 pm

Let Be the Midwives

The New York Times looks at the prosecution of midwives in Indiana, where only doctors and nurses can legally assist births. I believe the same may hold true in Maryland, where we used a licensed midwife-nurse for our daughter’s birth.

Midwifery certainly predates any law governing the practice or the modern-day practice of hospital deliveries. This doctor-hospital thing is a fairly recent practice, while midwives have been birthing babies for millennia.

Society by Joe WilcoxFeb 11, 20068:55 pm

‘Live 8’ or Death

Two Saturdays ago, the family hauled off to Tysons Corner Center, so that my wife could shop at the New Balance store and my daughter at the Sketchers there. On a giant flat-panel monitor at the back of the Sketchers played Live 8, particularly Richard Ashcroft’s performance, with Coldplay, of The Verve staple “Bittersweet Symphony”.

The performance stuck with me, as did vague memories of Live 8, which I mostly missed. I certainly shouldn’t have overlooked the concert as much as I did. During summer 2005, I struggled through some logistical problems at work, which greatly distracted from many things that should have been greater priority. Events like Live 8 come `round maybe once in 20 years, if Live AID is any indication.