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Room One

I am in Room One, the first on the left at the top of the wide marble steps, with the rest of the first-graders. The mothers are beginning to leave. A lot of kids are crying. It still has not occurred to me to be afraid.

Why I Like My Father

Vigil

At first John had gone with one of the search parties, walking across the open fields dense with dried stalks. The men marched in a great straggled line, an arm’s length separating them, setting each foot deliberately. It was still dark and it was usual to delay the search until first light, but the autumn had turned winter suddenly. They were afraid: she was such a frail child.

Why Schools Don’t Educate

Schools were designed by Horace Mann and Barnas Sears and W.R. Harper of the University of Chicago and Edward Thorndike of Columbia Teachers College and others to be instruments for the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce, through the application of formulas, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.

Most Likely To Succeed

At home in Montgomery, Wanda’s azaleas are in full bloom, the whole front of the house covered in a profusion of lavender, pink, and fuchsia blossoms. Up here on Cape Cod, it is April and still there is frost on the windowpanes. Wanda’s daughter-in-law tries to fool everyone into believing it’s spring with the forsythia.

The White Guitar

In fourth grade, after the bra-and-girdle notebook affair, we all fell in love with Julia Harris. By “we” I mean the foreign boys in Madame Bouvet’s class, and also Pascal Fourtané, the only French boy we foreigners hung out with.

A Cat Story

Andy was already twelve when I met him. He lived at our local dharma study group center, where we talked about impermanence, suffering, enlightenment, compassion, old age, death, the meaning of self, and in what sense the mind could be said to continue beyond death.

Gary Blake

I met Gary Blake at the meditation hall. It was a place of silence, but Gary Blake was not a silent man.

Comforts

Clean sheets and warm wool blankets, barn swallows, music

Mercedes

What Henry wants to be is an actor, but in the meantime he teaches a course called “Great Plagues.” What I want to do is play for the Lakers, engineering the break while Kareem signals for the lob.