OUR WEEKLY READER: THE FXBG ADVANCE SATURDAY 7/11/26
The Family Heart, Part 2. Ten Things I Learned as a First-Time University Instructor. A Spelling Bee in my Bonnet. Never Imagining a Tank on a Neighborhood Street Would Instill More Fear Than Pride.
The Family Heart, Part 2: Oh, Brother
By Steve Watkins, ADVANCE EDITOR
Second in a series.
September 2022. I called my brother Wayne a while ago to find out how things had gone at the doctor. This might have been back in the spring. It was early morning for him—he lives on Maui—and he was out in his vegetable garden gathering kale. Chickens and roosters screeched in the background. I was in Virginia on my way to Costco, sitting in lunchtime traffic, waiting for the light to change. We’re getting old, him and me, both of us doing hard time in our 60s, though I don’t usually feel it except in those panicky moments when I’m tired and have chest tightness and wonder if my heart’s about to give out. It’s not as if it hasn’t happened before. I also feel it whenever I climb stairs or hike steep hills, “steep” being a word I define much more loosely these days than I did back when I was an endurance athlete and once ran the Pike’s Peak Marathon.
Read the full article
Ten Things I Learned as a First-Time University Instructor
By Paul Cymrot, SPECIAL TO THE ADVANCE
I paraded through the iron gates of my university with a degree in hand 30 years ago exactly. That same summer I started my own business and have been running it ever since. The degree was in English and American Literature and the business is a used and rare bookstore here in Fredericksburg. Whether the first was the best possible preparation for the second is a matter of debate during quiet afternoons in the store, but there’s never been any doubt that my love for books and book-people has fueled it all, and made a happy life.
This past spring I was invited to teach an upper level English seminar called Adventures in Rare Books at the University of Mary Washington. They offered me a cozy classroom with an antique seminar table, a polyester polo shirt with university logo, and $175 for each 75 minute class, (not including preparation and grading), to teach on this subject that has been both my avocation and occupation. All this plus the lofty sounding title of Adjunct Instructor. Who could resist?
Read the full Article
A Spelling Bee in My Bonnet
By Dr. Patrick Neustatter, SPECIAL to THE ADVANCE
I can’t stand people like Shrey Parikh, the 14 year old from Rancho Cucamonga, California, who just won the 2026 Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Well, it’s not really anything I have against Shrey specifically, or the fact that he’s a hero because he knew how to spell “bromocriptine. (Last year’s winner had to spell “eclaircissement.”)
It’s all part of a resentment I’ve harbored for years because I can’t spell—a state of affairs that all too many people think means I’m a moron.
Read the full article
‘Never Imagining That a Tank Driving Down a Neighborhood Street Would Instill More Fear Than Pride’
By Drew Gallagher, Advance Columnist
On July 4 of that Bicentennial year, the local parade ended at nearby Carsonia Park in a red, white, and blue splash of food and carnival games next to the tot lot where we often played. The parade featured a real live tank that turned down Emerald Avenue, the street where we lived, on its way back to the armory. The tank weighed more than our family’s Ford Granada, and left impressions in the street’s macadam that remained there for the rest of our time in Pennside. When we made new friends in the neighborhood, we would show them the tank tracks as if we had discovered the bones of a T-Rex.
Read the full Article
This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”