Executive Editor, CNN Enterprise & Features (Travel, Style, Space/Science, etc). Former New York Times and BBC. This account represents my views and not CNN.
My curriculum vitae
Joined May 2009
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Ironic sharing of my latest contribution to work, given that it requires looking at a screen. (Just suggesting not do it while with your child.) A parenting essay...
cnn.com/2025/01/16/health/sc…
Made my podcast debut yesterday on @CNN's "5 Good Things" (I'm at minute 9:35)...
cnn.com/audio/podcasts/5-goo…
Latest thing written for work; maybe helpful/inspiring to you?
cnn.com/2025/01/04/health/st…
Last daily fact about me as I stop this yearlong personal (over)sharing experiment:
I find myself (my stories, dreams, opinions, thoughts) interesting.
Thanks for indulging me. I’m gonna take a break from any daily sharing in 2025 and spend the time on some other pursuits.
I have kept a personal journal since Dec. 29, 1986. The first sentence of my first entry on that day was: “Four days after Christmas, I’m now with my Grandmother (Henneberger) in Annapolis, and going down my list of people I should see during my Christmas vacation.”
(A final) short story + hand-drawn ilo:
A Leap at the Wheel
After staying up all night on New Year's Eve, I fell asleep at the wheel, My car drifted off the road and then down an underpass, putting me and my friend underneath the bridge that held the highway we'd just been on.
My tiny review of “A Complete Unknown”: Electric, fun, funny, cool. The Chalameleon transforms into young Dylan in this remake of “8 Mile.” Norton’s Seeger is beatific. Barbaro’s Baez is smoldering. But what steals the show is the only thing this has ever been about: the music.
For my last Saturday chronology-of-my-life photo, one of me that basically capturing how I think of myself these days…
My 7 favorite audiobooks of '24:
* Britney Spears memoir
* Sinatra bio The Chairman
* Road to Paradise (Apocalypse Now)
* Mary Jane - Jessica Anya Blau
* Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell
* All the Leaves are Brown (Mommas & Poppas )
* You Could Make This Place Beautiful - Maggie Smith
I finished 27 books this year. My 6 favorite were:
* Tacky by Rax King
* To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
* Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti
* Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
* 11/22/63 by Stephen King
* Trainspotting and Shallow Grave screenplays by John Hodge
I once jumped in the Irish Sea on Christmas day, a tradition in which people leap from from the Forty Foot rocky cliff just outside Dublin, a spot made famous from the opening of James Joyce's “Ulysses.”
My favorite Christmas movie? It’s a Wonderful Life
My favorite Christmas song? Fairytale of New York
cnn.com/2015/12/21/health/it…
I played an “Ethiopian slave boy” (no lines) in a community theater Christmas production when I was 9. My regrettable costume: brownface and torso (for I wore no shirt), brown pantyhose (to save on using more brown make-up, presumably), arm bands and loincloth (read: mini-skirt).
Short story + hand-drawn ilo:
All I Want for Christmas
When I was age 4, I woke up at my grandparents' house on Christmas morning before everyone else and opened up all the gifts. Behind me was a discard pile of boring stuff, like clothes. Toys in front. I Grinched it up good.
In the penultimate Saturday chronology of pictures this year, this chestnut of the double daughter pile-on tradition in our last Brooklyn apartment.
