Little Big Moments

After my parents were revealed as the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, I still held the belief that the ocean was inside a conch shell, even when I pressed my ear to the shell back at home in Raleigh.

With a new year comes an opportunity to reflect on what the past one provided. As 2026 begins, here’s a list of things I’d like to learn over the course of the next year — some practical, some fun, each rewarding in its own way.

My eight-year-old daughter asked for a drum for Christmas, a snare with a strap around her shoulder so that she could march around the house and through the neighborhood. This brought a Christmas carol to mind.

I loved the student reporting on Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s “Oh Shoot” sessions because I love poetry and basketball. Poetry doesn’t have to be about basketball, of course, yet there is a poetry to basketball.

I was saddened by the death of D.G. Martin, whom I long admired as a “man of letters.” Martin’s charm and humility fit the idiom of a scholar and public figure.

I have delighted in Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s new book of poems, “The New Economy,” including “Praise House,” which, even if it wasn’t specifically dedicated to Ross Gay, would call that poet to mind, especially his “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.”

I am grateful for family, friends, my faith community, food, shelter, health, and health insurance. In addition, I find it helpful to give thanks for specific smaller occasions, which brings me to the Waffle House.

Now that ICE has arrived in the Triangle, my thoughts turn toward a recent exchange with my friend Ezekiel. He is a Cuban-American pastor in New Jersey and a legal citizen of the United States of America.

Since 1998, November 13 has marked World Kindness Day in order “to inspire individuals and nations...

First, I’m grateful that the swab test was negative and this is a variant of an acute upper respiratory tract viral infection, a.k.a., a common cold. Whatever it’s called, I’d rather not be sick.