I’ve rediscovered tennis. I played when I was a teenager and rarely has a year passed when I didn’t play a few games, but this spring, I signed up for a town round-robin and found myself playing regularly twice a week for the first time in ages. Thinking about the game — my game —…
Like a few million other people, I went to see the new movie Wonder Woman soon after it came out. Like a few hundred other people, I’ve taken a course in the Sumerian language and was surprised when, as a minor plot point, our heroine reads a few lines of that ancient tongue. So I wrote…
My essay in the Connections column of The Boston Globe Magazine, October 16, 2016: I’ve never been to a quinceanera — the traditional party given for 15-year-old girls as a sort of bat mitzvah/debutante/you-are-now-a-woman celebration popular in Latin America. However, I have recently been to several cincuentaneras (fetes for folks turning 50). And they are getting elaborate. My sister’s 50th…
The Boston Globe Connections column yesterday printed my essay on my experience away from the Internet, forced to actually connect with the other people in my presence to learn anything — and enjoying it. I coined a phrase to describe the collected brainpower in a room: the Roomnet. Earlier this year, an archaeological dig took…
What’s more than a handshake and less than a hug? The Sudanese have the answer. From the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine (1/12/14): Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you the Sudanese hug. While working on an archeological excavation in northern Sudan, I was fascinated by a form of greeting I had never seen…
The July 14, 2013 issue of the Boston Globe Magazine printed this letter: DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION Just a quick note to tell Jack Cheng (Connections, June 23) that he wrenched my attention away from the crossword with his first paragraph: “A 70-year-old man is blocking the base path . . . . As he stumbles, I race toward…
My latest contribution to the Boston Globe Magazine came in the Connections column on Sunday June 23, 2013 begins this way: A 70-YEAR-OLD MAN IS BLOCKING THE BASE PATH. He’s clearly in the wrong here, so I shove him forward, and as he stumbles, I race toward second base. Wiffle ball is not to be trifled…
Here’s my latest publication, for the Boston Globe Magazine’s Connections column. It’s about the birds and the bees and what that phrase helps explain about sexuality (spoiler: it explains nothing).
I occasionally write about the kids for one reason or another and the Globe has published a recent essay on identity and food shopping here.
After my nephew Harrison came to visit us, I wrote a short essay about being an uncle vs. being a father and it was published in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine yesterday. Here’s the link.
Jack Cheng, PhD 