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Cracking the Fiery Core: We are Not What We Have
How many of us live to be defined by our possessions? How many of us find value only in what we have achieved and won and coveted? I wrote about this nagging issue of human governance on November 22,...
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The Eggshell Generation: No Freedom for Danger Children
Life has changed for modern children. When I was growing up in the Midwest, you sought freedom — and if it wasn’t granted with a bicycle, then you found other, more nefarious ways, to run away and...
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On Being AWOL: End of an Era in Pau
The second contributory fact for my 80 day absence was the premature closure of Mr P’s family house in Pau. Mr P’s aged aunt’s health had deteriorated to a stage where she needed more in-depth care...
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The Nunnery Door
As you know by now, I spent some helping clear out the aged aunts house at Pau. The upside of this was that I was offered my choice of the goodies on offer — i.e first dibs on the treasure. There was...
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The Sexualization of Platonic Business Relationships: How Many Families Do...
I’ve always found it odd when people you work with, or collaborate with, or may work with in the future, use the phrase “getting into bed together” as a business condiment as if to somehow oddly...
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A Romanov in a Pau Garden: A Glorious Last Moment in Living History
One sunny morning in Pau, one of the neighbors came to take some plants for his garden. The elderly gentleman in the photograph on the right is Monsieur Romanov — a descendant of the Romanov family,...
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Microaggressions: Microassaults, Microinsults and Microinvalidations
Have you heard about “microaggressions” that come in the form of “microassaults” and “microinsults” and “microinvalidations?” You may not know those totems of pain by their formal names, but I’m...
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Curse of Old Men: More Creepy than Funny
Unlike women, as men age, there’s a tendency to stigmatize our awful attempts at humor by branding us “creepy” or “perverted” or “just gross.” Plant an unfunny line on a 20-year-old guy and a teenaged...
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Raising Cynical Children in an Idealized World
Ideally, we want to raise caring and tender children who rightfully grow into wise and smart adults. Unfortunately, the way into adulthood is, and always had been, fraught with predators and...
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Giant Pile of Death Sucked Hollow
A long time ago, in a lifetime far, far away — when I was still eating flesh and muscle — there was a grand tradition during Summertime in Nebraska for family and friends to get together and eat...
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Writing a Journal of Memories: The Education of a Teacher
[Publisher’s Note: What you see on this page is the beginning of a publication project Dr. Howard Stein was preparing for David Boles Blogs in the year 2000 upon the celebration of the occasion of his...
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An Unredeemable Removal: William Jennings Bryan as the Magnificent Loser
William Jennings Bryan — known as “The Great Commoner” and “Keeper of the Faith” — was a Populist, religious, conundrum. He was for the people. He was against big money. He fought, testified, and...
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Here’s a Boles Book for Cheap Holiday Decor!
Hi there! I’m pleased to announce I’ve written my second “Boles Book for…” this Summer! The newest book is called — Boles Book for Cheap Holiday Decor — and while the title suggest frugality, I...
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On Becoming a Mentor: Listen to the Birds
Memory is an acute thing. It can baptize you, take you over, reflect on where you’ve been and, […]
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My 2016 Presidential Campaign
As we stretch into 2016, the politics of our nation cannot be ignored for their short-fingered vulgarity and the ultimate distress of who we’ve become as a teenaged nation. I’m missing the human...
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How a Big City Teaches Multicultural Tolerance
As we tumble headlong into the dire possibility of a Trump Presidency, I am reminded of the salient, if silent, lesson some of us learn when moving from a small town to the urban core of a Big City: If...
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As Holidays Fade, Culture Disappears
As we step into, and away from, malleable malfeasance, we cannot but help to linger on what is, and what has been lost. In the United States, we have cheapened our culture with vulgarity, and...
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Case of the Half-Boiled Toad
I’m sure you know the fable of the slow-boiled frog. If you drop a frog into a boiling pot of water, the frog will leap out to escape the heat. If, however, you place a frog in a pot of lukewarm water,...
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Holidays of Exclusion
It is important to belong. You often belong to others. Sometimes you’re forced, for a moment or two, to belong only to yourself. We appreciate the self-defending, but that’s usually a private affair....
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Ukraine War Diary
The world is a tiny place of intimacy that informs a greater expanse of suffering. My new friend, Alexander Grushchansky, lives in Ukraine. Before the war he was a jeweler. Now he fires a machine gun....
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