Conor Grennan's Blog, page 10

Des Moines, Iowa: Politics and Prose

I was in Des Moines last week (…sorry, for those who don't speak French, you might know it as "The Moines") as part of the Des Moines Public Library's 2011 AViD Author Series. I'd never been to Iowa, and I have to admit that there were only two things I knew about the state: that [...]

Trying to kick my non-addiction to coffee

I've recently made yet another attempt to start drinking coffee, but I fear I might have missed my window. I should have started when everybody else started – when I was in high school, or at least college. It's an effort just to remember that I "need it" every morning or I'm "going to die," [...]

The Grill and I

I bought a new grill in time for Memorial Day. Nothing represents summer quite as well as a grill – it's like some pagan totem to the blissfully warm weather. It's a final nail in the coffin of this brutal winter, the winter of a foot of snow per week, of wondering if we were [...]

Inner city inspiration

On one of my recent speaking engagements, I found myself at a high school in Cincinnati. I was peering into a classroom from the hallway and wondering if I should be concerned that a student had a gun to the back of a teacher's head, who was kneeling down, facing the wall. I cleared my [...]

How to get everything you want (in one simple step)

Anybody that says you shouldn't have a baby and move houses at the same time – unless they mean literally, which I would agree with – hasn't really thought it through. You have a newborn baby, let me tell you something: you get a free pass on everything. No lie. We had two grandmothers in [...]

On the birth of my daughter and running red lights

Such a cliché, the wake-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-rush-to-the-hospital-because-holy-mother-in-heaven-this-baby-is-coming, but there we were, early Thursday morning, 1:30 a.m. At first we thought we had more time than we did. (Doesn't everybody? Isn't that the story of our very lives?) But soon the contractions were coming more frequently, and Stamford Hospital was about 20 minutes away, and we were tossing [...]

That beautiful pain of parenthood

Something about being a father (or maybe just a parent in general  – I don't want to be exclusionary here) seems to change your chemical make-up in ways that are both unforeseen and mildly embarrassing. For example: you can find yourself getting choked up during commercials for laundry detergent. In this commercial, a handsome young [...]

Rediscovering the Library

My feeling is that anyone who makes use of libraries has a hard time understanding why they aren't completely packed. They're almost too good to be true, libraries. You get the occasional wake up call, of course, when you've been away for a while. I was asking my friend Charlie, who reads a surprising amount [...]

Our Man in Amsterdam

When I was doing various interviews in Ireland and the UK, they would ask me where I was heading next. "Amsterdam," I'd tell them. "Oh – behave!" they'd joke. They said this for a couple of reasons. First of all, they don't know me personally. My wife likes to tell the story of my bachelor [...]

A Nation of Butlers

I've spent a lot of time in England – really I have – and I have friends and family there. It doesn't feel exotic; it feels more homey than anything else. I know London well.

And yet I cannot go to England and not instinctively think everybody sounds like butlers. They could be selling gum, but more often it's the ones who are giving directions. The guys at the airport. As them where the baggage carousel is, and it's like you're the King of Siam.

"Right around the corner there, sir, and make a left. Did you come in from Ireland?"

I tell them I did.

"Your baggage will be on carousel one or two, then."

How can you not love this country? And why aren't we all talking like this? I felt like I was about to board a steamer.