Jaq Greenspon's Blog, page 9

What are some of your favorite ways to spend a Saturday?

As is my wont these days, I tend to analyze the question a bit before answering. One of the things living in Europe, especially Eastern Europe, has taught me is how America-centric things are. Now granted, I do spend a fair bit of my time looking at and reading things in English, but still, there’s […]

What were your friends like in high school?

I almost skipped this question. What were your friends like in high school? I’m not even sure how to approach this one, considering high school was some 35 or so years ago. Twice as much time has passed since I’ve been there than I was when I was living the experience and thought I would […]

What are the top 5 things that you and your spouse have in common?

When you stop and think about what you have in common with anyone, let alone the person you have chosen to spend your life with, it seems like it should be a no-brainer, right?  Here, the question is looking for the “top 5 things” which implies there are at least 6 and probably many more. […]

What qualities do you most value in your friends?

Friendship is such an interesting topic. It seems like there should be a checklist someplace you can go through to decide if someone is a friend or not. I mean when you’re asking yourself what qualities you value in your friends, wouldn’t it make sense to have a list of qualities in general? I did […]

How did you celebrate your 21st birthday?

At the time of this writing, I am 53 years old. This means I’ve celebrated my 21st birthday twice at this point, which in turn means the original celebration, way back in 1988, was a long time ago and my memory is going to be faulty at best, revisionist at worst, and most likely completely […]

Who are your favorite artists?

“What is art?” “I can’t explain it, but I know it when I see it.” It’s an old joke, to be sure, but it’s kinda true, especially for me. I know very little about art, especially intrinsically. What I mean is that everything I do know, I’ve had to seek out and learn on my […]

Did you have a car in high school?

  We’ve got ourselves another deceptively simple question here. As a journalist, I have a fundamental problem with these closed questions. Queries about “favorite something” or “tell me about your” prompts are great for sparking a lengthy answer or discussion, something which can get to the heart of something bigger, perhaps, but “Did you have […]

What are your favorite movies?

  Again, we’re faced with a “what are your favorite X?” type question. This time around it’s movies instead of books, but the storytelling aspect still holds tight. And again, I’m left trying to decide to answer with a straight-up list or to approach it as some sort of esoteric exploration of life and art. […]

Gail

You always know. When you get a message from someone using someone else’s account or phone number, you know. “Hello, this is so and so, can you call me back?” You get that pit in your stomach that something is wrong with whoever owns that account. I’ve been that person in the past, the one […]

What are your favorite books?

This week’s question about my favorite books is, as you’ve probably guessed, going to be a bit more difficult than merely spitting out some title and moving on. Then again, this is my 16th answer, just over 30% done for the year of this project, and if you haven’t figured out by now that none […]