The Whistle

I’m going to take a couple of risks here: ranting about how other people should raise their children (bearing in mind that I have no children, to make it even juicier), and writing about a rerun on television. Today Oprah’s show reran a feature on a 7-year-old girl who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. This […]

The Hours

If you are no longer in high school (lucky you), hear some harp arpeggios and send yourself back there…. The hour of the day that you had a class makes all the difference. You got your most hated class right after lunch? Great time for a nap. Your best class first? Bummer: you’re still half […]

Summit

I was called to a summit, representing the United States of Me in talks regarding Thanksgiving 2009. I am not a very effective delegate, but unfortunately the people can’t find anyone else to do the job. The only smart move I made was to stop for a pastry and a coffee on the way. Because […]

Annotated Bibliography: French slop, Italian despair, and So Ends the Play.

If Americans have so little sense of nuances, it isn’t that they’re incapable of grasping them– after all, American reality itself is sufficiently nuanced– but that they would be troubled by them. To accept nuance is to accept ambiguity of judgment, argument, and hesitation; such complex situations force you to think. They want to lead […]