by Jamie Chavez | Jan 25, 2016 | Words & Language
I grew up the child of two Midwesterners of modest means, so I knew from an early age about pudding—it was that powder Mom mixed with milk on her old Kenmore mixer until it thickened, then put in the fridge to cool and thicken a little more. You know—like a soft...
by Jamie Chavez | Jan 16, 2016 | Miscellany
You’ve heard me say this before: I grew up in a home filled with books and magazines, music and musical instruments. I have known from my youth that exposure to this made a huge difference in my intellectual life. (That I cared about having an intellectual life at all...
by Jamie Chavez | Nov 30, 2015 | Books You Might Like, Miscellany
My parents always had a huge built-in bookcase wherever they lived (my father built them). They were primarily filled with the novels my mother had accumulated in her youth and all sorts of books my folks acquired as a young married couple, including museum exhibition...
by Jamie Chavez | May 25, 2015 | Words & Language
My parents, as I’ve noted before, were verbal people who liked to talk, liked to (ahem) exercise the language. As a career pilot in the air force, my father exercised a very different language—often acronymical (I made that up) in nature, much of it profane, all of it...
by Jamie Chavez | Aug 14, 2014 | Miscellany
Mine has been an actively recycling household for at least twenty years, and I don’t just mean turning in soda bottles for cash. (I know that reference dates me; it can’t be helped.) I’ve understood the concept a lot longer than that, of course. I listened to stories...
