Category Archives: COURAGE

GOOD-BYE, SWEET BOOM

Posted on July 10, 2021 by Kit Troyer

I woke up around 4:30am today to the sight of an owl swooping into the branches above me and taking away a rat, which protested loudly as it departed from the branches and from this life. It was a shocking … Continue reading →

Posted in CHILD REARING, COURAGE, DOGS, HEROES, SPIRIT | 52 Comments

SOMETIMES IT TAKES A GHOST

Posted on April 28, 2021 by Kit Troyer

Shakespeare’s Hamlet is considered one of the greatest plays ever written. But it’s also a ghost story. The king is killed by his brother, who then marries the widow and takes the crown. The dead king re-appears as a ghost, … Continue reading →

Posted in COURAGE, HEROES, LITERATURE, SAYINGS, UNIQUELY AMERICAN BULLSHIT | 5 Comments

WE’VE BEEN GIVEN HEARTS TO KNOW THE INCREDIBLE

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Kit Troyer

I thought of Ray Bradbury today while reading about the NASA helicopter on Mars. I thought of him not because of his first book, The Martian Chronicles, which he published in 1950. Instead I recalled the day 30 years ago … Continue reading →

Posted in CHILD REARING, COURAGE, HEROES, LITERATURE, SPIRIT, UNIQUELY AMERICAN BULLSHIT | 6 Comments

BEST DAYS OF MY LIFE

Posted on April 17, 2021 by Kit Troyer

Adam Braseel was wrongfully convicted of murder 14 years ago. Though he hasn’t been officially exonerated, he is out of prison now and beginning to put his life back together. The wrongful imprisonment was caused by sloppy police work, prosecutors … Continue reading →

Posted in COURAGE, HEROES, SELF HELP, SPIRIT, UNIQUELY AMERICAN BULLSHIT | 6 Comments

FIRST DO NO HARM

Posted on September 1, 2020 by Kit Troyer

The influence of Gandhi on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is well known. But Gandhi himself owed a debt to the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, who had written on the same topic of nonviolence. And Tolstoy, in turn, learned from … Continue reading →

Posted in COURAGE, HEROES, POLITICS, SPIRIT | 19 Comments

MIKE KONRAD

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Kit Troyer

It was sad and frustrating to learn that my old newspaper editor Mike Konrad died today of Covid19. Earlier in the pandemic, the deaths of songwriter John Prine and Los Angeles-area family practitioner Dr. Paul Constantine hit me hard, but … Continue reading →

Posted in COURAGE, HEROES, UNIQUELY AMERICAN BULLSHIT | 14 Comments

LET IT BE MESSY

Posted on June 26, 2020 by Kit Troyer

A couple days ago my wife and I received the 30th-reunion book from our college. It’s a thick red paperback with updates from hundreds of classmates. I looked up friends. I looked up the guy who seemed during college to … Continue reading →

Posted in COURAGE, SELF HELP, SPIRIT | 13 Comments

THANK YOU, MISS KOPP

Posted on June 4, 2020 by Kit Troyer

Yesterday I wrote about a bad teacher. Today I write about a good one — Janice Kopp. Miss Kopp was my 6th-grade teacher. She was strict, scary, a grammar fanatic, and … utterly heroic. She remains one of the two … Continue reading →

Posted in CHILD REARING, COURAGE, HEROES, MY CHILDHOOD, POLITICS, SAYINGS, UNIQUELY AMERICAN BULLSHIT | 24 Comments

DOUGH ON HER FINGERNAILS

Posted on May 26, 2020 by Kit Troyer

When my mother-in-law was in middle school in Beirut around 1946, she arrived late to class one day. The teacher scolded her. “You owe ten cents,” he said. It had already been a long day for the 12-year-old girl. She … Continue reading →

Posted in COURAGE, THE ARMENIAN IN-LAWS | 10 Comments

SPEAKING UP

Posted on May 21, 2020 by Kit Troyer

A friend recently wrote an essay for Time magazine on the cholera outbreaks in France in the 1830s. The piece is a good reminder that problems we experience today, though they may feel unique and once-in-a-lifetime, generally have similar antecedents in … Continue reading →

Posted in COURAGE, HEROES, POLITICS, UNIQUELY AMERICAN BULLSHIT | 5 Comments