by Dan Kempner | Apr 29, 2020 | Facing Your Fear, The Kempner Column
Dan Kempner Legacy Columnist I’m a New York Jew, which automatically makes me a little neurotic. It’s in the contract when you join that particular club. New York has a bad reputation, true, but on the other hand, if you could not say, “Oh yeah, I’ve been mugged three...
by Dan Kempner | Oct 29, 2019 | Features, Gratitude, The Kempner Column
Dan Kempner MDI Contributor My wife runs a little school in our house, for teaching English to Vietnamese children. This means that twice a week, for four hours, my house becomes a war zone of sorts. The couch is a trampoline, rooms are hide-and-seek havens. The...
by Dan Kempner | Aug 28, 2019 | Features, Mature Masculine, The Kempner Column
Dan Kempner Columnist Personally I don’t know what maturity really means, and it’s something I’ve observed more in the breach than by actual practice. But I know it when I see it, and I often see it by watching my wife. She is a young woman, but there’s depth to her,...
by Dan Kempner | Jul 28, 2019 | Features, Scars, The Kempner Column
Dan Kempner Columnist Some people peak early. I was one such. My glory years were in middle school. We’d moved back to a small town in Westchester County, New York, and I was a little taller, with a bit more of a well-knit, man-like frame compared to the other young...
by Dan Kempner | May 28, 2019 | Features, Our Father's Legacy, The Kempner Column
Dan Kempner Columnist Come this fall, I will have been dead for twenty years. That’s a long time and it gives a man room to think. Father Scattered here, in this slow-bending creek, and mixed here and there with the powdered bones of my second wife, I’ve pondered a...
by Dan Kempner | Apr 26, 2019 | Features, The Kempner Column
Dan Kempner Columnist He was perhaps 30 years old, lean and muscular. Over six feet, tall for a Vietnamese, his long, direct strides took him quickly from the outdoor shower to the deep end of the pool. I was resting at the far end and naturally, he dove into my lane....
