(This article also appeared at The Express) Jordan McGowan, City College Panthers’ football wide receiver coach, grew up with a keen awareness of race. As the son of a father who was active in the Black Panther Party and a
(Originally written on September 2, 2014) This month is the beginning of a very full life for me; tomorrow, I start working on my Master’s degree. On top of working two jobs, full time graduate school is daunting. For weeks,
Around our first wedding anniversary, my wife and I decided that we wanted a dog. After successfully a houseplant alive for most of that year, we joked that a puppy would be the next step in the natural progression of
(This article also appeared at The Express) “If you ever decide to start smoking weed, let me know,” my mom beamed. I was sitting on a barstool on one side of the kitchen counter while my mom sat across from
My grandfather passed away in December of 2019. He was one month shy of 96. I was named after him, in a way—while he was born Alexander Christopher, and I gladly carry on his middle name, everyone called him Punch.
When I moved to Oklahoma around the age of 10, I was a certifiable Yank in many ways, thrust into this foreign world of horse ranches and pickup trucks. It didn’t take long after we first arrived at some unincorporated
If you make coffee at home, then there’s a pretty significant chance that you, dear friend, make bad coffee. But that, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing—bad coffee is better than no coffee, much in the
My mom moved my younger brother and I half-way across the country not long after I celebrated my 10th birthday. We left a lot of the life we knew in the San Diego suburb of La Jolla behind—mostly because a