A Christmas Story

One of the podcasts I follow is “Stuff to Blow Your Mind,” from hosts Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick. This year for their annual Christmas episode they chose the topic “A Major Award: The Ancient and Occult History of the ‘A Christmas Story’ Leg Lamp.” It turned to be a fascinating jaunt through the history of Greco-Roman votive lamps in the shape of godly feet. (The wick came out a hole in the lamp’s ceramic big toe.) 

Robert and Joe opened the episode with a loving introduction to the classic 1983 movie “A Christmas Story,” obviously a primal cultural artifact for other Generation X nerds. Yesterday I shared with Facebook friends this year’s “A Christmas Story” episode of Gay Sitcom Dad: 

 

We're enjoying a quiet family Christmas break at home in Bellingham. After a long hard 2021, the kids were disappointed to miss out on travel this year. We're grateful their stepfather made sure each kid had a great Christmas. 

 

It looked like Oliver would miss out – earlier this year Brenden promised him the long-awaited new Xbox, but global supply chain problems continue to curse the Leishmans. Fortunately, after several close calls, last night Oliver heard of a rumored Xbox “drop” in a Lynnwood strip mall this morning. So we got up at 5:30, drove south on I-5, waited in line at GameStop, and came home to bliss out over the True Meaning of Christmas.

 

After I posted on Facebook yesterday about Oliver receiving his Best Christmas Present Ever, a friend texted to ask “Did Brenden drive to Lynnwood, too?” 

 

Are you kidding? The whole point of being a fabulous gay uncle is you get to give amazing presents then sleep in. Once upon a time I was a fabulous guncle myself. Before parenthood squeezed all the fabulosity out of me.

Yesterday at 10 am, the GameStop doors opened to the happy customer five places in line ahead of Oliver and me. 

Here is a picture I took at 10 am of the line behind us in Lynnwood-adjacent Martha’s Lake, across the parking lot from Walmart: 

You see that green car below the Walmart sign? That’s the car I drove to GameStop yesterday with Oliver. 

 

Why is a strange man kneeling next to Papa’s jacked-up car in front of all the slightly less savvy Xbox enthusiasts? It turns out he’s the real reason my trip to GameStop this week will be “A Christmas Story.”

Oliver’s Xbox “drop” intel was excellent. There’s a reason he’s the Leishman child you’d pick for the Zombie Apocalypse. After Oliver received an indirect Instagram rumor about a round of upcoming GameStop Xbox deliveries, Oliver and Brenden stopped by the Bellingham GameStop to chat with the nerds. Their dude zeroed in on the Martha’s Lake store as a low-traffic location in the boonies that was receiving 40 units. He suggested we arrive by 7:00 am for the 10 am store opening. 

 

A 7:00 am line-waiting challenge is child’s play. In October, Eleanor and I had to leave the house at 4:20 am to get to the Tacoma Dome in time to stand in line all day for “Pit” tickets to the Harry Styles concert. Yesterday Oliver got to sleep in till 6 am and was home by noon, including our stop at the Jamba Juice in Alderwood Mall.

 

We arrived in the Walmart parking lot at 6:50 and parked in front of GameStop. We were the third car. It was cold. Fortunately there was a Starbucks across the parking lot. We sat in the car with our Americano and Peppermint Mocha until 8:30. The four stalwarts ahead of us in line all brought camp chairs.  

 

Around 9 am I noticed I had a flat tire. I called the AAA Roadside Service toll-free number for the first time since Covid. They suggested I download the app instead. If I insisted on talking to a person, the wait would be 15 minutes. But I was free to hang up and wait for them to call back in 15 minutes.

 

At 9:15 am the nice lady called and took down my information. She told me the expected arrival time was listed as 11:05 am, but it probably would be sooner. At 9:45 am I got a text saying the truck would arrive at 10:15. Instead it arrived early, just as Oliver and I were about to walk into GameStop and claim our Xbox. 

The repair man found a shiny screw embedded in the tire. My spare tire had been sitting in the car so long it was empty. The repair guy didn't have any compressed air on his truck, so he told me to drive across the street and use the air pump at the gas station. The repair guy also tried to upsell me into going to a nearby Firestone dealer for a fix, and said he wouldn’t drive a brand new Xbox all the way to Bellingham on that dusty old spare tire. But my dad said we’d be fine.

 

Back in Bellingham I dropped the flat tire at Les Schwab for a complimentary repair, then picked the tire up the next day on my Christmas Eve errand run as we prepared for tonight’s arctic blast. We can expect anywhere from 1 to 8 inches of snow overnight. A rare white Christmas in the Pacific Northwest. 

 

Tomorrow morning I’ll let my children sleep in before opening presents, savor the last box of Trader Joe’s peppermint creams, and make them watch “A Christmas Story” on a loop. Then if we want to drive across town for Christmas dinner at Grandma’s this year, my children get to go outside in the snow and change the tire with The Old Man.

After regaling us with tales of the limb-shaped lamps of antiquity, the hosts of “Stuff To Blow Your Mind” said their “A Christmas Story” podcast episode next year will probably be about Soap Poisoning. Mine too.   

Gay Sitcom Dad

Often I ask myself whether today’s best story is about a Father, a Writer, or a Lawyer. Readers vote overwhelmingly for “Father.” 

So here’s Year 5, Episode 1 of Gay Sitcom Dad: “Facing Addiction.”

Glee. Rachel's birth mother was Idina Menzel.

My kids have been attending Zoom School since March 13, 2020 – which means they spend weekdays invading the dogs’ and my space and sucking up all the wi-fi. 

Even though Bellingham is blessed with excellent public schools, we’ve all struggled with the challenges of online education. Quarantine came as a surprise to everyone. Last spring local educators focused on helping families cope with the once-in-a-century crisis long enough to make it to summer. Because pandemic supply chains limited the availability of ribbons and gold stars, the high school ended up giving every student who logged on A’s in all their classes.

Modern Family switched child actors mid-run. 

Like both The Partridge Family and my son

For the 2020-21 school year, Bellingham Schools’ administrators, teachers, and counsellors prepared an elaborate online curriculum. With real grades. It’s been a challenge for everyone.

 

My high-school nephew is living with us this month while my parents snowbird in Hawaii. That means the dogs and I are stuck with four teenagers. The house’s Apple products include five iPhones, three iPads, two iMacs, and one ancient Macbook. We also have four cheap school-issued laptop PCs that run Windows and Chinese spyware. 

Today the kids were particularly stressed as they approached the end of the semester, with Zoom finals scheduled for tomorrow and the next day. The first period of high school begins at 8:30 am. At 8:23 am this morning we discovered that our Centurylink wi-fi had gone down. At 8:24 am we discovered none of our AT&T iPhones worked either.

Ordinarily I would apply Ockham’s Razor and look for a simple explanation – operator error, unpaid utility bill, divine plague, etc. But none of these alternatives explained why Centurylink’s DSL cable and AT&T’s cellular reception both failed at the same time. 

Jack Donaghy’s 30 Rock gay nemesis Devon Banks (Will Arnett) 

with one of Devon's surrogate triplets

Like rest of their generation, my children are justly accused of being addicted to their phones. Addition is a serious thing. But today began with a period of farce.

 

First we tried turning everything off and on. Nada. As we continued searching for answers we kept looking in the same place – i.e. the internet, which turns out to be completely useless without DSL, wi-fi, or cellular data. D’oh.

 

Someone remembered that radio stations provide useful information about local disasters that is not only streamed online but also broadcast on the airwaves. Somewhere in the garage there is an old-fashioned radio for emergencies. Apparently it’s migrated to a mislabeled bin. 

 

Cars are also equipped with radios. For the last six months I’ve been driving my dad’s old Honda. Unfortunately, my daughter ran down the battery a few weeks ago when she was banished outside to finish making loud TikToks. When we jumpstarted the Honda the stereo returned to its factory settings – and I keep forgetting to ask my parents for the security code to reinstall the radio.  

 

What about the ancient minivan, you ask? The Kia is parked on the street in front of the house, uninsured, waiting to be traded in for a new car after my ship finally comes. We discovered the minivan battery is dead when I tried to jumpstart the Honda. (One of the neighbors came over to give us a jump instead.) The powerless minivan remains parked on the street, its radio silent, dreaming of being smashed by a heavily insured drunk driver.

Brothers & Sisters (& Sweaters)

Eventually Bear and I walked over to campus to log onto WWU’s guest wi-fi. 

I was able to read one page of the 29-page legal document I’d been waiting to download. And I finally found the local news. According to the Bellingham Herald, an “unrelated contractor” cut the fiber optic cable serving Bellingham public schools, Centurylink home customers, and “some” AT&T cellphone users. Like us.

The New Normal, cancelled after one season.

Andrew Rannells also originated the role of Elder Price, 

one of the obviously gay missionaries in The Book of Mormon.

Back at the house the situation remained unplugged and dire.

 

Some Leishmans were anxious because they couldn’t attend classes or study for finals. (Obviously that was my conscientious nephew, not my lazy children.) Others were excited about skipping school – until they realized everything fun requires a connection. Eleanor was the hardest hit. Eventually she wandered downtown in a daze, hoping to find some methadone. 

 

I suggested activities like reading a book, or sorting the craft cupboard. This reminded Rosalind that just last week she mourned the departure from Netflix and Hulu of her favorite movie Coraline. Rosalind was disappointed when I wouldn’t pay $19.99 to download a movie when we already owned at least two copies on DVD. So today she and the other kids found a Bluray player that sorta worked and opened the DVD closet.

 

Ordinarily the dogs and I would relish an unplugged day where we couldn’t do legal work, and were forced to read and write between naps and walks. But we couldn’t enjoy ourselves while surrounded by whining children going through withdrawal. So Bear and I drove over to Whatcom Falls Park and took a long walk in the sunshine.

 

Afterwards we stopped by my parents’ house and confirmed their Comcast connection still worked. I decided if our wi-fi was still down after 4 pm I would take pity on my children and drive them back to Grandma’s for a fix. However, shortly after I arrived home my computer reloaded Facebook, and bars returned to everyone’s iPhones. 

 

According to the Bellingham Herald, internet service to the schools and other affected locations was restored at 4:12 pm. At 4:13 the children barricaded themselves to their rooms to stare at screens and reconnect with the Borg.

Mr. Brady died of AIDS-related cancer in 1992.

When Rosalind gave me a hug at bedtime, she said the best part of the day was watching Coraline. Until it started skipping.

Sean's Single Gay Dad was cancelled after just 13 episodes.
I'm still going strong years later.

Click here for more episodes of Gay Sitcom Dad

Hot Stuff

Brains make connections. When you’re a writer, nothing drills deeper into your brain than the connection between two words. For example:  the gayest two-word phrase I know is “Hot Stuff.” 

The Simpsons has been on the air longer than I’ve been out of the closet. The gayest episode of television ever, “Homer’s Phobia,” aired in February 1997, when I was in Chicago working as an LGBT rights lawyer for the ACLU. Simpsons executive producer Al Jean confesses that “Homer’s Phobia” contained “my favorite scene ever from the series”:  the transformation of a steel mill into a gay nightclub called the Anvil.

I’ve seen the scene hundreds of times on the screens at Sidetrack in Chicago, the greatest video bar ever. Until this week, if you’d asked me to connect the two words “Hot Stuff,” my brain would have immediately pointed to the video clip of a buff dude at the Anvil edging past Homer with the line “Hot stuff coming through.” 

 

As soon as Homer confronted his homophobia, my friend Charles’ brain would ask my bartender crush to pour another round of purple slushie drinks.

Last weekend I chilled and watched The Boys in the Band on Netflix. Gay television empresario Ryan Murphy produced a television version of the successful 2018 Broadway revival, retaining its glittering cast of openly gay actors. 

Mart Crowley’s play was an extraordinary event when it opened in 1968. It’s set in a Greenwich Village apartment as a gaggle of pre-Stonewall gay men gather for a self-hating birthday party. Impatient with various butch closet cases, queeny Emory delivers this deathless line while swiveling his hips and a tray of hors d’oeuvres: “Hot stuff, coming through!”

If I’d googled “Hot Stuff” and “Homer,” I would have discovered The Simpsons writers intended the gay steelworker’s line as a winking reference to a gay classic. 

 

But I should have caught the reference even before the internet was invented. I’d seen the 1970 movie version of The Boys in the Band. (William Friedkin went on to direct The Exorcist, The French Connection, and Cruising.) In grad school I read Mart Crowley’s classic script. Hell, I saw the previous off-Broadway revival of The Boys in the Band less than a year before “Homer’s Phobia” first aired, but I didn’t make the connection until this week. I guess my brain thinks nothing is gayer than The Simpsons.

Happy Coming Out Day (October 11)

Set Theory

Everything I ever needed to know I learned from Anne of Green Gables.

Of course, the question is which Anne of Green Gables – the original novels by Lucy Maud Montgomery? Or the classic CBC miniseries from the 1980s that I’ve already gushed over?

For example, in the television show Anne’s delightful schoolteacher mentor Miss Stacy is the one who delivers this inspirational line:

“Tomorrow is always fresh with no mistakes in it... well with no mistakes in it yet.”

In the 1908 novel, however, the corresponding dialogue actually occurs after Anne serves a fresh-baked cake to the new minister’s wife. Anne accidentally replaces the vanilla called for in the recipe with arthritis rub. 

Even though the scene isn’t in the television series, when I run the dialogue in my head I nevertheless hear Megan Follows playing Anne and Colleen Dewhurst as foster-spinster Marilla:

“Marilla, isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?"

“I’ll warrant you’ll make plenty in it,” said Marilla. “I never saw your beat for making mistakes, Anne.”

“Yes, and well I know it,” admitted Anne mournfully. “But have you ever noticed one encouraging thing about me, Marilla? I never make the same mistake twice.”

“I don’t know as that’s much benefit when you’re always making new ones.”

“Oh, don't you see, Marilla? There must be a limit to the mistakes one person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I’ll be through with them. That’s a very comforting thought.”

Like classic children’s literature, the sporting world provides a variety of mixable metaphor alternatives. When do our missteps haunt us forever? Or when can we cut our losses, close the books, and make a fresh start? 

In most ball games, like basketball and football, scoring is cumulative. When you’re down 50 points at halftime, they still make you slog through and finish the game – even when everyone knows you’re never going to catch up. This is one of the many non-gay reasons I abandoned Little League and turned to the theater at a young age.

On the other hand, sports like tennis offer a stark contrast to cumulative-scoring ballgames. 

A tennis player who wins a substantial majority of individual games or even most of the individual points can nevertheless lose the match. Regardless of whether the score is 6-0 or 7-6 with a three-hour tiebreaker, all that counts is the up or down thumb at the end of each set. That's the elegance of Set Theory for English Majors.

This week a friend noticed I’d been writing about AIDS and HIV, and asked what today’s blog essay would be about. I realized the answer was simple:  it was time to come out as HIV negative.  

I became an activist in an era when HIV was associated with brutal medical outcomes, horrific discrimination, and crushing stigma. I don’t think I’ve internalized that hostility myself. To the contrary, I’ve always been surrounded by friends on both sides of the HIV divide, regardless of where we landed by “luck or circumstances,” as David France puts it in How to Survive a Plague. I’ve dated men with either sero-status. I am always honest. But I seldom discuss HIV publicly, mostly because I’m burned out. Plus I’m actually quite shy. (Strangers reading this blog might be surprised by this assertion.)

One of the overarching themes of my writing is the tyranny of the closet – regardless of whether unhealthy secrecy involves sexual orientation, mental health, or other important aspects of one’s identity. Various recent experiences have chipped away at another layer of writer’s block. So when I was inspired to write about AIDS, I knew I couldn’t approach the truth without addressing this particular issue.

Once in a while, life offers you a new beginning. You can fake your death, transition genders, or join the French Foreign Legion. Bankruptcy lawyers like Nevada’s “Fresh Start Law Firm” can help you crawl out from under a hopeless mountain of debt. Perhaps this is the year when Valentine’s Day or the arrival of spring will usher in your personal season of renewal.

In my gay life, the most vivid experience of closing the books has come from regular and sometimes irregular HIV testing. As I recently wrote in “OK Boomer,” my generation of gay men was the first to come out into a world where we knew AIDS was waiting to kill us. We were years away from an effective treatment for the virus. Untreatable opportunistic infections still ravaged weakened immune systems. All we had was a primitive blood test for HIV antibodies, an inexhaustible supply of condoms, and a deafening safer sex message.

I got my first HIV test in the late 1980s, at a public health office in New Haven, Connecticut. I still hadn’t had “sex” yet (at least as the word would be used by a gay male epidemiologist, then or now). But I was very earnest, the counselor was very polite, and none of us knew very much about how the HIV virus works. 

Back then they sent your blood sample out to a laboratory, which added two or three weeks to the process. Half of the people who chose to test anonymously never returned for their results.

My most remarkable HIV testing experience occurred in Chicago in the mid-90s. Three weeks after getting tested at Howard Brown Health Center, I received the result:  “indeterminate.” At the time, that essentially meant a 50/50 chance of either a recent HIV infection, or a lab error. The “expedited” follow-up test involved a mere 48-hour wait. Interestingly, during those two days I experienced all the nasty flu-like symptoms that most patients get when they seroconvert. My symptoms disappeared as soon as I got the reassuring results. Hmm, perhaps my melodramatic hypochondriac daughter has inherited something from her father after all – a heightened placebo effect.

Nowadays my Bellingham physician Dr. Heuristic usually just includes an HIV test as part of my routine bloodwork. But I prefer to also make an appointment with the excellent STI folks at Seattle’s Gay City. As soon as you arrive, the punk receptionist sends you to a interactive computer terminal. You get to answer nonjudgmental questions about what you’ve been doing since your last visit. (Try not to fudge your numbers too much, it messes with their statistics.) I usually get the same experienced counselor. We chat about life, then take some samples. He puts a drop of my blood into the well of the plastic rapid test device. We watch together for the unsurprising but nevertheless reassuring result. 

I’ve never been Catholic. But every time I walk out of Gay City to finish the rest of my Seattle errands, I feel like I’ve been to Confession. And received gay Absolution. 

Previously: “A Lifelong AIDS Walk and Picnic”

Next: “After the Fall” 

Hindsight and 2020

Last January I published a “Year in Review” blog post listing my favorite movies, books, etc. for 2018. Over the holidays I started writing a similar post covering 2019, but eventually I abandoned the attempt.

I also tried listing resolutions for the new year, like I did the year before in “Resolute.” Once again I found myself with nothing but padding. 

On the 2019 arts side:   I saw very few movies in 2019. No one ever invited me out other than my son. As a result, any list of favorite movies would have convinced you I have the cinematic taste of an eleven-year-old video gamer.

On the 2020 resolutions side:  I didn’t have the heart to measure my expectations against 2019’s many frustrations, adventures, and surprises. The future is even more of a mystery. Nevertheless, right now I feel healthier and happier than I’ve been in my entire life.

Favorite television shows I saw in 2019:

1.     Fleabag

2.     Finding Neverland

3.     The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened

4.     Bojack Horseman

5.     The Expanse

Favorite books I read in 2019:

1.     Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage:  Wrestling with D.H. Lawrence

2.     Louise Penny – the complete Chief Inspector Gamache mysteries 

3.     Carol Dweck, Mindset

4.     Jordan Ellenberg, How Not to Be Wrong:  the Power of Mathematical Thinking

5.     Leslie Jamison, The Recovering:  Intoxication and its Aftermath 

6.     Isaac Butler & Dan Kois, The World Only Spins Forward:  the Ascent of Angels in America

7.     Esme Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias

8.     Heather B. Armstrong, The Valedictorian of Being Dead

9.     Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

10.   Michelle Obama, Becoming

11.   Kevin Simler & Robin Hanson, The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

12.   Sheila Weller, Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge

13.   Judith Grisel, Never Enough:  the Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

14.   Craig Brown, Ninety-nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret

15.   Jonathan Rauch, The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50

16.   Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson, Why Nations Fail

17.   Dana Schwartz, Choose Your Own Disaster

18.   Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens:  a Brief History of Humankind

19.   P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing

20.   Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food

Last year my reading list included several memoirs by writers living with mental illness. I’ve already started 2020 with another example of the genre, John Elder Robison's Look Me in the Eye:  My Life with Asberger’s. 

The author’s younger brother is Augusten Burroughs, the crazy gay memoirist who wrote Running With Scissors. In his foreword to Look Me in the Eye, Burroughs shares the advice he offered as his brother began chronicling life on the autism spectrum. “I gave him the oldest rule in writing:  Show, don’t tell.”

My top television and book picks for 2019 both were British imports. Here’s the Wikipedia synopsis for Fleabag, which you can stream on Amazon Prime:

Fleabag is a British comedy-drama television show created and written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Waller-Bridge plays Fleabag, an angry, confused, sexually voracious young woman living in London. Sian Clifford and Olivia Colman also star. Andrew Scott joined the cast in the second series [as “the Hot Priest”]. The programme frequently breaks the fourth wall with Fleabag providing exposition, internal monologues and a running commentary to the audience throughout.

This weekend Waller-Bridge added a couple of Golden Globes to her Emmys. Go ahead and jump on the critical bandwagon – Fleabag’s writing and acting really are exceptional.

Folks are less likely to be familiar with Geoff Dyer, an English writer now living in California. He published Out of Sheer Rage in 2009. I ordered the book from the library last year after seeing it described as “the best book ever about writer’s block.” Steve Martin's blurb hails it as “the funniest book I have ever read.” Here’s the Amazon synopsis:

Geoff Dyer was a talented young writer, full of energy and reverence for the craft, and determined to write a study of D. H. Lawrence. But he was also thinking about a novel, and about leaving Paris, and maybe moving in with his girlfriend in Rome, or perhaps traveling around for a while. Out of Sheer Rage is Dyer's account of his struggle to write the Lawrence book – a portrait of a man tormented, exhilarated, and exhausted. Dyer travels all over the world, grappling not only with his fascinating subject but with all the glorious distractions and needling anxieties that define the life of a writer.

In addition to its stream of consciousness noodling about the writing process, Out of Sheer Rage resonated with me for several additional reasons. First, Dyer and I come from similar-ish backgrounds. As an American English Major who grew up in Canada during the 1970s, I get an alarming percentage of Dyer’s references and jokes, including his adolescent obsession with the oeuvre of hack thriller author Alistair McLean. Second, like Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Dyer writes with a wit that is incisively funny without descending into snark, candidly self-lacerating but deeply humanistic. Third, and most importantly, both Dyer and Waller-Bridge successfully create and sustain an unique voice that connects directly with the members of their audience.

Voice happens to be one of my obsessions as a reader and writer. Not just because I’m a first person writer myself, but also because I’ve come to embrace a model of human brain function that relies heavily on the metaphor of the sometimes competing, sometimes collaborating voices in your head. Or at least the voices in my head.

Fleabag and Out of Sheer Rage pose the same artistic question:  As a writer, how do you find your individual voice and then use it to both show and tell?

On to 2020. 

Two of the Leishmans of Bellingham are known for their fierce but contrasting commitment to television. My younger daughter has very broad taste:  she will repeatedly binge-watch every TV series you’ve ever heard of. Currently she’s revisiting Smash, while simultaneously cooking dinner, making a TikTok, and Snapchatting with three friends.

In contrast, my nephew is utterly obsessed with a single show:  The CW channel’s long-running Supernatural. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of Supernatural lore, and an impressive collection of artifacts related to the show. Tragically, the series is in its final season. 

Before Christmas I was reading my weekly email newsletter from Village Books, Bellingham’s marvelous independent bookstore. There was an author book signing announcement for The Adventurous Eaters Club, a newly published book about making healthy family meals together. I thought to myself, “Hmm, someone recommended this book for me as a single dad, maybe I should stop by Village Book and check it out.” However, I noticed the meet-the-author event was that same evening, when I would be in Vancouver for chorus.

The author’s name and picture looked familiar. Who’s Misha Collins? Then I recognized him as one of the actors from Supernatural. Collins and his wife wrote The Adventurous Eaters Club.

Grandma wasn’t home, but I left her a message about my last-minute discovery. That put me in a moral quandary. Do I create irresistible pressure by also texting the news to my nephew during his day at high school?

I am the best uncle ever.

My friend BJ Fogg is a behavior scientist at Stanford, and an expert on habit formation. As classmates at Brigham Young University, BJ and I were among the cofounders of Student Review, BYU’s pioneering independent student newspaper.

Last week BJ appeared on the Today Show to discuss his new book Tiny Habits: the Small Changes that Change Everything. Here’s a link to BJ's book page at Amazon.

This year I’m taking BJ’s advice. I won’t be revisiting my 2019 resolutions, and I won’t be making a long list of new resolutions for 2020. Instead, I’m going to focus on a single goal:  Prepare and eat more healthy family meals. Everything else will follow. Fortunately, my parents gave me a signed copy of Misha and Vicki Collins’ The Adventurous Eaters Club for Christmas.

In spite of everything, I can already tell 2020 is going to be a great year.

Postscript - Happy Birthday Dad