“Look!” said my 4-year- old piano student. “I set up the bench for us!” And he had. He'd set the bench  exactly like I do when we're going to share it. I set it sort of cockeyed to the piano so that he can sit up close where he needs to and I can sit farther away. He said, “I did it this way because you are fat and need to be farther away, and I am thin, and I need to be closer.” His nanny cringed in the background, her little charge having called out something that in polite society we “aren't supposed to…

I belong to an organization that I care about deeply. It's the kind of organization that seeks to take care of both its members and the community at large. I know that any organization is fallible, being made out of fallible people. And, so, any organization is bound to fail its members from time to time. This weekend the member that it failed was me, and in order to move past it, I feel the need to write about it. I also know that what I'm feeling right now is a common but often silently kept experience…