Robert - Today - Needless Hugging

There’s the shake and lean; the hug from behind; and, the newest addition, the triple — any combination of three girls and boys hugging at once.

“We’re not afraid, we just get in and hug,” said Danny Schneider, a junior at the school, where hallway hugging began shortly after 7 a.m. on a recent morning as students arrived. “The guy friends, we don’t care. You just get right in there and jump in.”

“If somebody were to not hug someone, to never hug anybody, people might be just a little wary of them and think they are weird or peculiar,” said Gabrielle Brown, a freshman at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in Manhattan.

Comforting as the hug may be, principals across the country have clamped down. “Touching and physical contact is very dangerous territory,” said Noreen Hajinlian, the principal of George G. White School, a junior high school in Hillsdale, N.J., who banned hugging two years ago. “It was needless hugging — they are in the hallways before they go to class. It wasn’t a greeting. It was happening all day.”
For this and much, much more, see the paper of record.

Robert - Today

This is one of my dreams: To live in a renovated gas station

The Return of the Native - 1878/1978

He had been a lad of whom something was expected. Beyond this all had been chaos. That he would be successful in an original way, or that he would go to the dogs in an original way, seemed equally probable. The only absolute certainty about him was that he would not stand still in the circumstances amid which he was born.

1878 - Written by Thomas Hardy; 1978 - First read by Robert

Georgetown Graduation - May 1984

That was a very white shirt, apparently.

Good Legs - Spring 1982

Robert - May 1989

Behind me, the local agricultural club is discussing the length of the flight. There are various versions of what the French(Belgian?)-accented pilot said. No one has yet attempted the math. What I'm noticing most are smells: fresh moist towlette and stale upholstery and cigarette smoke on people's clothes. Also the man next to me in a lousy light blue suit. Where is the glamor in international travel? The film is Pathfinder -- the English-language version. What?

I am still waiting for excitement to overtake me. Perhaps I am too tired. I am also sitting next to the toilet. Will I look retarded working in my French grammar book? Pathfinder, it turns out, is the story of a boy on "the frozen planes" of Lapland 1000 years ago. It stars Mikkel Gaup and Ingvald Guttorm. I do want to go north. At least as far as Amsterdam. (Okay, I'm getting excited.)