Happy Holidays, everyone! An out-of-town friend and I started a new tradition this year: reading Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol to each other, in its entirety via video chat. As the process got underway, my friend, ever the clever one, said I should record it for my students, their parents, family, and friends. And so I have. Published in 1843 to help Dickens get out of debt, the novella endures as a Christmas staple, and has never gone out of print in more than 180 years

You stride in, all bangs, boots and curves And ask the bartender for a whiskey. He instinctively begins to Pour a house whiskey, and you stop him and ask instead for something Japanese. You scan the room for an open table and take The open seat next to me. I respond by citing Mr. Darcy’s only good line. “You’ll have to do better than that, sir.” “Oh.” I stand up to leave for a different part of the bar. You don’t look up From your screen. I place an earbud in my good ear and

One of the many things my mom told me as I was growing up in our cash-strapped family of five was to eat with a tortilla so we would get full. It seemed as thought we were always eating beans, rice and tortillas. This tortillacentric culture spilled out into the neighborhood. My childhood friends would gather in the kitchen, a small army of latchkey kids, placing their orders for bean burritos or tortillas with butter. While my mom was at work, my live-in grandma would don th