I’m not planning to break up with President Obama, but he is definitely giving me flashbacks to relationship dysfunctionality. Tolstoy is forever being quoted on the subject: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But I don’t think he had it right. There’s often a familiar, cyclical character …
A friend contacted me yesterday for help in tracking down the provenance of a quotation attributed to W.E.B. Dubois, the towering writer, scholar, and activist who contributed so greatly to the liberation of African Americans. Here it is: Begin with art, because art tries to take us outside ourselves. It is a matter of trying …
Today’s my birthday. I share it this year with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a calendrical accident that confers the spiritual equivalent of a contact high. But for me, a birthday is always an occasion. Every year has a distinct character and completeness that begs to be understood: I want to hang it on the …