Gluing It Back Together

I drove out to the nursing home listening to Barry Manilow, lending some theatricality to what was probably a false alarm. My parents often played a Barry Manilow record when I was in preschool. So it isn’t my fault. I was listening to “This One’s For You,” which has a bold, swelling orchesteral sky, and […]

Scrooged

“I never used to be this cold, and I don’t want to think these things about people, but everybody I see is just the dregs of society.” It’s a holiday party, and someone is worried about what his job has done to him. He continued, “Like, these people will sit and watch television and I’ll […]

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 […]