2025.03.DisappearingMoment
I wish I could invest in Chinese companies. I don’t think it’s possible, and not just for me. I believe that it is impossible for anyone to invest in Chinese...
2025.02.DisappearingMoment
The Russian FSB picked up where the Soviet KGB left off. The KGB specialized in covert bugs and complicit informants. The FSB uses contemporary technology....
2025.01.DisappearingMoment
Beth was a committed vegetarian when we started dating, had been for years. I was several years in, too. And I had cut out dairy and eggs a couple of years...
2024.12.DisappearingMoment
This month, a lot of people got worked up about the possibility of mystery drones over New Jersey. We made Orson Welles comparisons. The New York Times...
2024.11.DisappearingMoment
If the world is ending, I want to be surrounded by kittens when it happens. Sleeping Marty, JoJo, and Lloyd (top to bottom) Sleepy Marty, JoJo, and Lloyd...
2024.10.DisappearingMoment
What are the odds that the worst human was born between 1878 and 1893? The world population in 1945 was about 2.4 billion. If 117 billion people have been...
2024.09.DisappearingMoment
“A device that permits people who haven’t anything to do to watch people who can’t do anything.” That was comedian Fred Allen's description of... television...
2024.08.DisappearingMoment
I stopped following the news and renounced social media in 2012. I stopped following sports in 2016. Over the past couple of years, I let myself start...
2024.07.DisappearingMoment
2024.07.DisappearingMoment My favorite record review is about Slint’s Spiderland. Melody Maker ran it in 1991. Steve Albini wrote it. I thought about that...
2024.06.DisappearingMoment
I always wanted my hair to be different. A lot of us felt that way. Many still do. I wanted to look like Kelly from the Bad News Bears. Like Ace Frehley, the...
2024.05.DisappearingMoment
Something you can do for the people you love is prepare a letter of instruction. Like other elements of estate planning, it makes mourning a bit easier. No...
2024.04.DisappearingMoment
Reading. Everything about it. Right‽ You wouldn’t be here otherwise. Our intrinsic pleasure is modulated by texts. Good writing enlivens us. Jargon sends us...
2024.03.DisappearingMoment
Merle (2012-03-21 – 2024-03-21) The photo of Merle links to a short video. Turn up your volume to hear Merle purr. Welcome to March 2024’s Disappearing...
2024.02.DisappearingMoment
I’ve had some minor aches and injuries over the past few months. Nothing terrible. More like the Henny Youngmann joke. No long or fast running for a little...
2024.01.DisappearingMoment
Disappearing Moment reflects my need to keep things simple. We can be mindful about how we spend our time and money. We can practice empathy and kindness. We...
2023.12.DisappearingMoment
This issue of the newsletter marks three years of Disappearing Moment. I realize that publishing a short, monthly newsletter isn’t a heavy lift. Or, rather,...
2023.11.DisappearingMoment
This month marked the end of Pacella Partners, an investment club my friend Mike and I have had for 21 years. We put money into it when we felt like it and...
2023.10.DisappearingMoment
I'm writing this with my little cat, Suki, on my lap. If you know our four cats, she's the smallest. The one who wears a collar. Suki is dying a lot faster...
2023.09.DisappearingMoment
I’ve been publishing this monthly newsletter for almost three years. To this point, I’ve never missed one of my self-imposed deadlines by more than a few...
2023.08.DisappearingMoment
The highlight of my month was watching the World Athletics Championships. The best track and field athletes spent nine days competing in Budapest. Imagine...
2023.07.DisappearingMoment
Don't go changing, to try and please me You never let me down before Don't imagine you're too familiar And I don't see you anymore My grandmother, my...
2023.06.DisappearingMoment
My library career started 17 years ago. That’s when I enrolled in library school at Drexel University and found my people. I’ve had well over a thousand...
2023.05.DisappearingMoment
I stopped following sports on Wednesday, November 9, 2016. It was my hair shirt, penance for our collective atrocity. I planned to spend more time...
2023.04.DisappearingMoment
I have no stomach for people who whine about identity or gender politics. We need to fight until America stops abusing people for their demographic...
2023.03.DisappearingMoment
I watched three high school hockey games this month. The first was the 3A semi-finals of the Flyers Cup. The second was the final game of the Flyers Cup. It...
2023.02.DisappearingMoment
My paternal grandparents lived into their nineties. They were old for at least half their lives. That's how they saw themselves. They didn't consider Old a...
2023.01.DisappearingMoment
Privilege is terrifying. Not the idea of losing it. I’m talking about the responsibility that comes with it. The obligation to redistribute it. This month,...
2022.12.DisappearingMoment
When my friend Eugene became a father, the thing he wasn’t ready for was the worry. He knew it would be there. That wasn’t the surprise. What got him was its...
2022.11.DisappearingMoment
Earlier this month, I attended an American Library Association meeting in Chicago. As the meeting ended, we discovered that four of us had flights that...
2022.10.DisappearingMoment
2022.10.DisappearingMoment You get to an age where you should only make recommendations about music to people who love you, and only if they ask. It happens...
2022.09.DisappearingMoment
Today falls in the midst of the Days of Awe: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the Days of Repentance that bridge them. It is a chance to make things right with...
2022.08.DisappearingMoment
August is birthday month in our household. About half of the family birthdays we celebrate occur in August. A new niece expanded our collection this month:...
2022.07.DisappearingMoment
I’ve been a lot more social over the past few weeks than I’ve been in several years. It started as I set up time with friends before the ALA Annual...
2022.06.DisappearingMoment
Calvin Trillin wrote that all families have a message. In Trillin’s family it was, “You might as well be a mensch.” For me, in my family, the message was,...
2022.05.DisappearingMoment
On Friday morning, May 5, I gave myself an antigen test and found out I had COVID-19. There should be a word for these confluences, when the thing you most...
2022.04.DisappearingMoment
(Adapted from a speech I gave at my mother’s 80th birthday on April 14, 2022) One of the best bits of advice I’ve ever read is something that a lot of people...
2022.03.DisappearingMoment
Years ago, there was a debate that divided my Reconstructionist congregation. Should we announce pets, along with the names of deceased family and friends,...
2022.02.DisappearingMoment
Every so often I run into a book or essay about how we would be happier if we stopped consuming social media and the news. The authors tend to looks like me....
2022.01.DisappearingMoment
“This is not advice,” Matt Levine will write before proffering tongue-in-cheek advice. “None of this is ever advice.” For Matt, a humorist disguised as a...
2021.12.DisappearingMoment
Yo! Welcome to December 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it. Podcasts An Absurd Result (I Liked It):...
2021.11.DisappearingMoment
Yo! Welcome to November 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it. Books A Billion Wicked Thoughts by Ogi...
2021.10.DisappearingMoment
Yo! Welcome to October 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it. Books Beginners by Tom Vanderbilt (2021)...
2021.09.DisappearingMoment
Yo! Welcome to September 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it. Podcasts Jacked (I Liked It): Taraji P....
2021.08.DisappearingMoment
Yo! Welcome to August 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it. Podcasts Butts & Guts (I Liked It):...
2021.07.DisappearingMoment
Yo! Welcome to July 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it. Books The Jewish Way by Irving Greenberg...
2021.06.DisappearingMoment
Yo! Welcome to June’s 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it. Books Bird by Bird (Highly Recommended):...
2021.05.DisappearingMoment
Yo! Welcome to May 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it. Books What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk...
2021.04.DisappearingMoment
Yo! Welcome to April 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it. Books Joint-Friendly Fitness by Bill DeSimone...
2021.03.DisappearingMoment
Yo! Welcome to March 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it. Books Caste by Isabel Wilkerson (2020)...
2021.02.DisappearingMoment
Yo! Welcome to February 2021’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of opinions and experiences. I hope you enjoy it. Podcasts Amended (I Liked It): Laura Free,...