Not along ago, I visited a friend who is deeply plugged into the sound-the-alarm networks I sometimes find it easy to dismiss: Y2K! Avian flu! And so on. As soon as I walked in the door, she said this: “I’m worried that they’re going to declare a national emergency and suspend the next election—a coup.” …
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 …
Not long ago, my husband and I took a very brief trip to Seattle. It was an incredible day, all sparkling fall sunshine and bright autumn leaves, so in the little time we had free, we visited the Seattle Art Museum’s new Olympic Sculpture Park along the waterfront. It’s a lovely setting, with sloping hillsides …
I like to think of myself as emotionally evolved, but lately I’ve begun to question the feeling of security that gives me. After all, every person comes equipped with the same brain chemical and glands that armed our ancestors for terrifying encounters with four-legged predators. The brain regions called amygdalae are perpetually on guard for …
Almost all of what we have to say about nature is actually about culture. Trees in the wild are nature, but human beings’ relation to those trees is an artifact of culture as surely as a painting or a piece of music. That relationship varies greatly depending on place, time, systems of belief and symbology, …
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 …
I’ve become so addicted to podcasts that I feel antsy if I’m not caught up with my favorite ones. Currently, though, I have the opposite problem: WNYC’s Radio Lab, cohosted and coproduced by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, only has five episodes a year. It takes me a few short walks to listen to five …
We’re entering that time of the Jewish new year, the High Holy Days, when each person makes a cheshbon hanefesh—a “soul inventory”—in preparation for a new cycle of the calendar. Sometimes I feel that people are influenced by this period of reflection even if they aren’t aware of it. For instance, this fall, like the …
This coming Sunday there will be a huge “Summer of Love” 40th anniversary concert in Golden Gate Park, featuring everybody from Moby Grape to Jesse Colin Young (“C’mon people, now smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now”). I was there for the first summer of love, although I …
This has been a week of collecting horror stories of behavior by people who seem to utterly lack a moral compass. As a friend of mine said, “Sometimes the world offends me.” But is it true? Are some people entirely lacking, without moral conscience in the way that someone might be born without wisdom teeth, …