Clik here to view.
I wanna be a hero
I don’t know how it is with girls, but there is a persistent attraction among adolescent boys toward “heroism.” It can take really ugly forms as well as really attractive ones. I think there is nothing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Are we worth saving?
“Let me tell you something, my friend, Red says to Andy in The Shawshank Redemption, “hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.” And that may be true. Or it may be the only thing that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The bird needed to be flipped
This very unusual expression was used—I am tempted to say “coined,” because I have never heard it before—by my friend, Bob Nightingale. He was describing a situation I didn’t see, myself, although I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What keeps me up at night
It’s not just worrying about things. I get roused out of sleep by new ideas, too. And I don’t really mind that. I wish I got more sleep, but I would hate to miss out on the ideas. I’m better about...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Strong women
Where I live, people want women to be “strong.” That is the official sentiment, at any rate. That seems to me to be asking for too little. Maybe I can introduce my concern by coming at it from the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Juneteenth, 2020
I think I’d like to pay some attention to Juneteenth this year. I remember hearing about it before, but only from a distance. Since last June, I have been thinking about the increasingly wide divisions...
View ArticleClik here to view.
And he lies scarcely at all…
Scene 1: Saint Peter and a few angels are performing the daily ritual with some dice and a chart of the cardinal sins. They throw an 11, look at the chart and see what vice is on special today. Scene...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Living without stories of our own
There are some things novelist Neal Stephenson just does better than anyone else. This post is about two of them. The first is that he builds these thick amazingly dense alternative worlds—worlds...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Diamond Dogs
I like institutions. I admire people who can call institutions into being. I have tried it myself from time to time and I know it isn’t always easy. Knowing how hard it is, my heart goes out to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dominant Cultures
As a common practice, “dominant cultures” and “majority cultures” are used interchangeably. When I argue that easily misused expressions like “dominant” should be used very carefully, I am told that...
View Article
