Do you know that Billie Holiday song, “Good Morning Heartache”? Lady Day’s lyrics personify the misery she feels at losing her lover, casting pain as her constant companion.
Good morning, fear.
I can’t pretend to know how life delivers comeuppance, let alone why, but I’m dogged by the feeling that I am getting mine now. [...]
With timing I’d like to claim as atypical but is probably the opposite, we are trying to sell our house. That puts me somewhere near the bleeding edge of the rather remarkable shakeout we are now experiencing. The image that keeps coming to me is a Gargantuan dog arising from slumber, noisily shaking itself awake, [...]
I wrote this on the plane home after a week on the road, so grateful I wasn’t booked on American Airlines that my good cheer was barely dented by a late departure and the fact that the passenger in front of me reclined her seat so far, I couldn’t quite see the screen of my [...]
Everyone I talk to is exhausted by the prospect of seven more months of presidential campaigning, American-style. But many people are also resigned: this is the system, it always has been, what can you do about it?
The culture of politics says a great deal about a country. (You can read more on this subject in [...]
I have a dear friend who understands the world of finance as well as I know my way around my own kitchen. For a long time, she’s been sending me alarming bulletins from people who keep a close eye on banks, Wall Street and federal financial regulators.
The economy has developed such an elaborate and [...]
I had another birthday last week, on the whole an experience far superior to not having one. But growing older is such a crazy quilt of joy and angst: as the inner library of experience expands, you know more, see more, feel more, have more choice in almost every matter; and all the while, despite [...]
Enormous props to the people at One Laptop Per Child, who so perfectly express the growing phenomenon of social entrepreneurship (do good, do well).
They’ve worked for years to perfect the XO laptop, which can be manufactured at a price that actually makes computer technology accessible to children in the developing world. In each era, [...]
I gave a couple of talks in a distant city a few weeks ago, one on each day of a two-day conference. That entailed being introduced several times, first as Goldfarb, then Goldberg. Everyone whose heritage diverges from this country’s uncannily persistent normative WASP-philia collides with prejudice on a regular basis. The garbling of my [...]
On Sunday, I rode in a wheelchair through the Oakland Airport, experiencing a taste of humbling dismay. I’ve been dealing with a pinched nerve for weeks now, learning through my own complaints how many fellow sufferers there are. (Along with another participant in the meeting I attended, I got down on the floor during the [...]
No, it isn’t an exotic bean curd dish at a very special Japanese restaurant. It’s Hebrew for “without form” and “void,” or “formless” and “empty,” as most English versions of Genesis 1:2 translate the Hebrew description of the chaotic state that preceded creation: “And the earth was without form, and void (tohu v’bohu); and darkness [...]
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