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A decade ago, my husband and I were resident writers for a month at the Rockefeller Study Center in Bellagio, on Italy’s Lake Como. Fellows (artists, scientists, scholars) rotated in and out of the center, a new batch of perhaps ten people being added or subtracted each week. Our month happened to coincide with a …

At dinner with friends this past weekend, the conversation turned to the urgent, imperative topic that seems inevitable these days: what shall we do now? In this context, “we” means all who feel misrepresented by the present U.S. administration, all who fear for ourselves, our nation and the world should its ambitions expand unchecked; all …

Have you heard the chorus of right-wingers blaming the “Jews and secularists” for ruining Christmas? One of the best pieces on this phenomenon so far is Frank Rich’s column in last Sunday’s \New York Times\. Here’s a taste: “‘Are we going to abolish the word Christmas?’ asked Newt Gingrich, warning that ‘it absolutely can happen …

In the time of the “values voter,” there’s been tremendous controversy over what “values” might mean (other than shorthand for self-righteous intolerance). What are our values as individuals and as a people? Whether or not we are fully conscious of them, each of us holds values that affect our perceptions and actions. The challenge is …

One mystical idea that interests me is that our experience in the material world resonates with a higher truth attached to the same moment in time. As readers of this blog know, it is my custom to follow the readings from the first five books of the Old Testament and prophetic writings assigned in the …

A couple of friends came over to help us celebrate the third night of Hanukkah. While I fried potato latkes, we talked about one friend’s difficulty in shaking post-election fear and despair — indeed, in facing the horrors of the daily paper. When the holiday began, she’d found herself thinking that lighting the Hanukkah candles …

Monday’s \New York Times\ carried an interesting article about how the Bush campaign’s media consultants used consumer market segmentation data to woo the voters they most wanted to reach. (The Kerry campaign tried the same thing; this is a culture-wide phenomenon, not a partisan one.) The article quotes advertising big-wig Donny Deutsch: “The selling of …

I hate TV commercials, so I tape the programs I like and watch them at leisure, fast-forwarding through the ads. Last night, I watched a “West Wing” from November that focused in part on an alternative energy summit convened in the fictional Bartlett White House. One by one, the president’s advisor dismisses the offerings of …

The huge dissonance in political life — the conundrum for any thoughtful analyst with democratic values — is why so many people who share no material interests with George W. Bush voted to re-elect him president. Most pundits seem to feel satisfied with a two-word explanation: “values voters.” Evidently it puts a cork in their …