My ancestors were nomads and refugees, and I have carried on that tradition. Sometimes I think I was born packed and ready to go. I no longer speak the language of infants, so I can’t quote my exact thoughts, but I have the distinct impression that the synapses that fired when I first opened my …
Current controversy around a work of art has me asking this question: what is our obligation to respect what is sacred to others, especially if it has no such significance to ourselves? In this story, four different notions of the sacred have come into conflict. Talk about a teachable moment! What can be learned from …
It is intrinsic to my nature to see possibility, to see it with precisely the type and intensity of focus a donkey brings to the carrot swaying on a stick before its eyes, and like the poor donkey, to follow it until I can’t. Some of my hopes went on past the point of possibility, …
When I was a kid, Thanksgiving meant tracing your spread-out fingers on construction paper to make a colorful turkey cut-out, and listening to prepackaged accounts of harmony among the early European settlers and the Native Americans who took pity on them, teaching them to grow corn, hunt deer and catch fish. At home, we cooked …
A kind reader directed me to The Singing Revolution, a film on Estonians’ movement to regain their independence from the Soviet Union, highlighting the special role music played in the sustenance of spirit and solidarity. And also, for me, a film on the double meaning of patriotism, both a shining strength—the indispensable key to independence—and …
President Obama has appointed 25 new members to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, a Reagan-era creation that combines representatives of federal cultural agencies (i.e., National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the U. S. Department of Education, the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, …
I’ve begun to see our perceptual capacities as a kind of funhouse (only not always so much fun). Our paths to clear sight are blocked here by obstacles, there by distorting mirrors. It’s easiest to spot the places a fellow-traveler has been tricked into thinking a mirror is a window; and hardest when we find …
I’m not known for the brevity of my blogposts, but if I had the power to command, this one would consist of three short sentences: Go here and read the Framework. Go here and sign on as an endorser. Go here and share your stories of culture and community. You can do all those things …
Dear President Obama: I appreciated your Rosh HaShanah message to Jewish Americans last week, especially the line that read, “Let us resist prejudice, intolerance, and indifference in whatever forms they may take.” You declared that on this occasion, “We rededicate ourselves to the work of repairing this world.” The time has come to translate these …
Three days ago, in an essay about the scapegoating of green jobs advisor Van Jones, who was hounded out of office by wingnut Fox commentator Glenn Beck, I wrote this: We must act now to put a brake on scapegoating before it once again becomes the force that controls public life. The issue will not …