I was plunged into what was known as the debutante social whirl. This was one of the ways fathers justified their own hard work and sacrifices.
We must work together to save and strengthen Social Security not just for my father's generation but also for my daughters' generation.
My father was a big influence - it was very important to him that we traveled, and he gave me my strong work ethic.
I grew up with my father, so I know more about cars than most women.
Now, since I'm a husband and father, discrimination against women isn't just political, it's personal.
I was born during the war, on October 20, 1942, as the second of five children. My father, Rolf Volhard, was an architect.
My father was in the First World War.
... a man could build whatever monuments he wanted in the worlds of politics, sports, entertainment, and business, but if they come at the expense of his children, then he has failed. Once the attention fades and the crowds stop cheering his name and...
According to Teleology, each organism is like a rifle bullet fired straight at a mark; according to , organisms are like grapeshot of which one hits something and the rest fall wide. For the teleologist an organism exists because it was made for the ...
The Rochester group [of VOTF], however, was met with some concern as they found it hard to believe my account as it unfolded before them. I feel that some people have a hard time with the truths around us, not only the sexual abuse by priests, but al...
We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any prov...
I was reading about animals a while back and there was this motherfucking scientist in France back in the thirties or forties or whenever the motherfuck it was and he was trying to get apes to draw these pictures, to make pictures like the kinds of p...
I was twenty-two, the same age she was when she'd been pregnant with me. She was going to leave my life at the same moment that I came into hers, I thought. For some reason that sentence came fully formed into my head just then, temporarily blotting ...
This was once Mazama, I kept reminding myself. This was once a mountain that stood nearly 12,000 feet tall and then had its heart removed. This was once a wasteland of lava and pumice and ash. This was once an empty bowl that took hundreds of years t...
It had nothing to do with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads or philosophies of any particular era or even with getting from point A to point B. It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no re...
Vladimir stood next to one of the beams on the back porch of our new home, leaning on his back. He reached in his pocket and grabbed a pack of cigarettes, Marlboro Reds which were his favorites, and he lit one up. He was dressed all in black; black s...
If all goes well, we will be back in time for a proper memorial service [for your father], Ben. I promise." Ben looked up, and all the bitterness was gone from his eyes, replaced somehow by both resignation and determination. "And if all doesn't go w...
And then, on September 11, the world fractured. It's beyond my skill as a writer to capture that day and the days that would follow--the planes, like specters, vanishing into steel and glass; the slow-motion cascade of the towers crumbling into thems...
Some people say it is a shame. Others even imply that it would have been better if the baby had never been created. But the short time I had with my child is precious to me. It is painful to me, but I still wouldn't wish it away. I prayed that God wo...
(We loved Mother too, completely, but we were finding out, as Father was too, that it is good for parents and for children to be alone now and then with one another...the man alone or the woman, to sound new notes in the mysterious music of parenthoo...
In his suicide note, Kurt Cobain wrote, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." He was quoting a Neil Young song about Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols. When I was twenty-four, I interviewed John Lennon. I asked him about this sentiment, one tha...
