Speak Tenderly

This week: the social worker was trying to talk to this woman with her eye swollen out of her head, the woman was thrusting her cell phone at this very young social worker demanding she talk to her dad. The hospital security guards talked about what to have for dinner. A college girl from Columbia […]

Guard Dogs

The two big news stories since I moved from Missouri have been: anti-Semitic lunatic shoots up the Jewish Community Center, and cops shoot teenager who is black and unarmed. Is that where I am from? Well, yes. It is a place that struggles with fear in its own ways. We will always have trouble with […]

Young American

A couple of months ago, I was on the subway, and in a classic liberal fashion, I was talking out my guilt to some innocent bystander, and I said, “I don’t think we should teach about the Holocaust any more.” What I meant, I realize now, was: “I can’t teach about the Holocaust. I can’t […]

The War

All my growing-up years, guns were in movies and (I imagined) in the hands of people less interesting and educated than me. I had no idea why anyone would want or need a gun. I moved to the city eleven years ago. I remember hearing someone got shot in the parking lot of the drugstore […]