Arlene Goldbard

My name is Arlene, and I’m a hypocrite.
Remember on April 29th, when I wrote about how the “peak oil” documentary The End of Suburbia, when I wrote about my determination to put up with the inconvenience of a one-car family so as to minimize my complicity with Big Oil? Well, the shelf-life of that […]

Some of us have it in our nature to sound the alarm, and some to say that this, too, shall pass.
Both are right, of course. Panic generates fight or flight, and we’ve seen the limitations of those tools for problem-solving. (Have we ever!) But an impenetrable conviction that all will be well without our […]

Tonight, the Hebrew calendar marks the beginning of Shavuot, a holiday that has its roots in ancient offerings from the barley harvest, and has come to mark the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai: the holiday of revelation. Like every milestone in the liturgical calendar, Shavuot invites us to examine our own lives and […]

Controversies about public cultural funding continue to pile up, even though the amount of money involved is insignificant in comparison to taxpayers’ investment in such public-spirited priorities as prisons and weapons of mass destruction.
Today’s New York Times carried a piece reporting that a House Appropriations panel recommends cuts of about half in current appropriations […]

We who attended school in the U.S. have a little chip in our collective unconscious that gets activated this time of year. It happened to me as I walked by the water yesterday afternoon. Even though I’m not planning a vacation and don’t have kids in school, something about the angle of the sun and […]