Living Above the Fold

In this article, I followed a couple of “home stagers” to learn about a most interesting practice: making your home look like a model home to help sell it.  It’s not something that I would have thought of myself, but it actually seems to work!  My wife still remembers this article mainly for my description of those weird “moss ball” things. She still points them out to me everytime that we see them at the furniture store.

Setting the Stage for a Sale (East Bay Express, June 23, 2004)

It’s a problem we’ve all faced at some point: What do you do if you have noisy, inconserate, sloveny neighbors? In this piece, I looked at some of the ways you can get your neighbors to behave.

The Dump Next Door (East Bay Express, June 8, 2005)

This is a holiday essay I wrote about the last Christmas that I spent with my grandmother, Oma. This is a pretty personal topic for me and quite a bit unlike most of the other posts I’ve made on this site so far.  I don’t think there’s much that I can say about this that won’t be clear from the piece itself.  I only hope that it gives you some small idea of what an amazing woman my grandmother was,

Oma (The East Bay Monthly, December 2008)

I was inspired to investigate this topic after hearing Cardinal Sean Brady of Ireland called on Irish Catholics to spread positive prayers via Twitter, texting or email.  It made me wonder about the other ways that people of faith might use social networking to reach out and proselytize.  It seems like the Internet, not being a push medium like TV, might not be the ideal way to reach people who aren’t already interested in a topic.  What I found was quite the opposite!

Religious Evangelists Spread Faith Through Social Media (PBS Mediashift, June 4, 2009)

It’s sometimes hard to stay in shape as we age, but it’s good to know that it’s not impossible.  In this shopping piece, I took a look at a few of the options for East Bay seniors interested in staying fit in their golden years.  I also learned to Tango.  That’s not easy to do when you’re like me — completely without rhythm!

No Sweat (The Monthly, November 1, 2009)