Tuesday mornings I try to go to the local farmers’ market. Almost all the vendors are Asian or Latino, so there are lots of interesting herbs and vegetables to try along with the onions and apples. One vendor offers an ever-changing array of tree fruit from his farm in the San Joaquin Valley. He is …
I have been thinking very hard about The Leadership Question. You know the one I mean: the nation is awakening from the long dark spell President Bush was able to cast on so many of us (“Yeah, but he’s such a nice guy…”). The conditions are coming together for a national learning experience. But whom …
I’ve been really confused about what the Bush administration is up to. Like when President Bush nominated his personal lawyer for the Supreme Court, I thought it might be further evidence of how out of touch he is. Either he truly didn’t comprehend how bad it would look, or–however deranged this might seem given his …
Call me perverse (and you’re probably right), but I’m sitting here feeling nostalgic for the fifties, thanks to George Clooney’s new film about pioneering TV reporter Edward R. Murrow, Good Night, and Good Luck. If you haven’t already seen it, I urge you to see it now. Here are some of the things that induced …
Here’s the good news and the bad news in a single sentence: Yesterday, UNESCO member states have a “Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions” and they did it over the strongest possible objections by the U.S. government. The U.S. State Department called on National Endowment for the Arts Chair …
It’s official: Friday’s \New York Times\ lead editorial said President Bush’s Thursday anti-terrorism speech to the National Endowment for Democracy “suggested an avoidance of today’s reality that seemed downright frightening.” There is irony here, of course: Bush’s speech was an act of rhetorical terrorism, designed to scare all of us deeply enough to place our …
The time of the new year is drawing close: Rosh HaShanah begins Monday evening. The process of preparation tests us. For the whole previous month, we dive into the river of time, poking under rocks and peering into dark places, making our soul inventory. Our missteps and misdeeds float to the surface, demanding to be …
In The Golden Notebook, her masterpiece of disillusionment, Doris Lessing wrote about the dream of a fellow stalwart of the British Communist Party. The book was published half a dozen years after Nikita Khrushchev’s revelations to the 20th party congress in 1956 of Stalin’s terrible crimes. In the party worker’s fantasy, he goes to Russia, …
The full extent of damage to lives and property on the Gulf Coast is unknown, but experts are expressing certainty that in terms of what it will take to repair a significant part of the damage, it is the worst such disaster to afflict the United States. The scenes of people mourning their homes and …
When I woke up this morning, my head was swimming with scenes from the news my overworked brain hadn’t been able to process, even with a good night’s sleep: Cindy Sheehan encamped outside President Bush’s ranch, young soldiers in Gaza weeping as they pried desolate families from their homes. If I set out to script …