Where I learned Black lives matter
To build a house. Or not.
Something in my head
Grandma is a seven-letter word
Playing with fire
A call of the wild ends too soon
Where I learned Black lives matter
I learned that racial discrimination is wrong the same place I suppose some people learn it’s okay. At home. From my parents. Most of this education took place during the late 1960s and early 70s, in Fairview Heights, Illinois, where I lived until I was ten. And, like the best lessons from parent to child,…
To build a house. Or not.
When Becky and I decided to build a house, it did seem a bit impulsive. We had just met. When Covid hit a few months later, the idea seemed suddenly improbable. Then impossible. Then, positively insane. Our original plan was to do what most people do and just buy a pre-existing place—a used house, as…
Something in my head
Nearly three years ago, something weird started going on inside my head. The chief symptom was spontaneous vertigo. Some dizzy spells were barely noticeable. Some were accompanied by deafness and profuse sweating. Some sent me crumpling to the ground in spinning agony. My only comfort was in thinking my symptoms were so striking, and so…
Grandma is a seven-letter word
I learned to play Scrabble from a grandmother who didn’t cut kids any slack when it came to this game she loved. When I finally learned to play at her level, it felt great. Until it didn’t. I was eight years old when I first played Scrabble with Grandma and lost that game by more…
Playing with fire
By the age of three I had mastered such standard life skills as how to stack things, how to operate a toilet, and how to start a fire. Indeed, I nearly burned our house down. You’d think that such a traumatic experience at that age would make some impression on my developing brain, such that…
A Call of the Wild Ends Too Soon
The Chapel Hill News and Raleigh News & Observer, March 8, 2009… The reports a while back of an improbable cougar sighting in Chapel Hill reminded me of my own series of backyard encounters with a feral feline. Four years ago my family moved here from Chicago into the Oaks Villas, a tidy subdivision alongside…
Michael Durbin 