Today is the 30th anniversary of the Challenger tragedy, the day when the space shuttle exploded and NASA lost seven astronauts: Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith A. Resnik, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, Gregory B. Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. Their sacrifice is memorialized at Arlington National Cemetery.

For the people ( Read more... )

[Copied over from Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mabfan/posts/10101583702080131 ]

Okay folks. This is about to get somewhat personal, but I feel I owe it to Robin Williams to note this.

I saw Dead Poets Society when it first came out, when I was still in ( Read more... )

Our latest The Brookline Parent column, Rights and Wrongs, is a little…political. I tackle the question of what the McCullen v. Coakley decision means to me, and to Brookline.

Today is the anniversary of the Challenger tragedy, the day when the space shuttle exploded and NASA lost seven astronauts: Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith A. Resnik, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, Gregory B. Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. Their sacrifice is memorialized at Arlington National CemeteryFor the people of my ( Read more... )

Meanwhile, over on Facebook, I posted the following:

I have a slightly more prosaic question about the Rolling Stone cover ( Read more... )

More pictures of the memorial. Someone moved it to the side, and many more items and messages have been left. Scroll over each photo for the title.


( Read more... )

For those who want to know or need to know, I am checking in. I am fine. I was not at the office today, so I am nowhere near the explosions. We are home safe, reporting in at 3:10 pm EDT. - with gnomi.

In the wake of last week's news out of Newtown, CT, gnomi and I use this week's The Brookline Parent column at Brookline Patch to write an open letter to our daughters.

Click to read Dear Muffin and Squeaker.

In the year 2000, I wrote a scene for the story "Kaddish for the Last Survivor," in which the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor gets a tattoo on her arm to honor her grandfather. The story, which appeared in the November 2000 Analog, was nominated for the Hugo and the Nebula and is probably my best-known story ( Read more... )

On September 29, 1988, over two years after the United States manned space program had been grounded due to the Challenger tragedy, mission STS-26 launched into space. The space shuttle Discovery, now retired, took our hopes and dreams back into space with it ( Read more... )