A friend sent me the link to a story on NPR about Juan Williams’ new book condemning what Williams perceives as the stuck irrelevance of entrenched African American leadership and calling for a new leadership paradigm. “Have you thought about blogging on” this book? “It would be good,” she wrote, “to see what you have …
If you watch television, you may have noticed a remarkable rise in the number of programs infused with some sort of millenarian spirit: the benign intervention of extraterrestrials and the super-intelligent, the ascendancy of misfits, the cheerful embrace of end-of-the-world scenarios. Ain’t we got fun? Actually, yes. In fact, I’m so thrilled by the whole …
Do you hear a faint crackling sound? Don’t be alarmed, it’s just a paradigm shifting. And about time too. Today’s New York Times carries a report on policies proposed by the Association of Art Museum Directors; AAMD says museums should take care in exhibiting sacred objects. A particular focus is on indigenous objects, such as …
My friend was speaking of a well-known Israeli peace activist who, at the start of the bombing, had come out publicly in support of the war in Lebanon. “He has trouble maintaining a big view,” she said, “when he’s in fear of his life.” No kidding. So do we all. In fact, it’s hard-wired into …
One of the most interesting things about our times is how much is being discovered about the workings of the human mind. I count myself among the many artsy and intellectual types who reject purely functional or biological explanations for feelings as too mechanistic and inhumane (or too inhospitable to my own sense of specialness). …
I really don’t want to write about this. I’ve been procrastinating all week, waiting for another blog idea to pop onto my mindscreen, but the only topic that comes up is the aching, bleeding, pulsating Middle East. Or more accurately, the shadowy simulacrum of the Middle East that swirls through cyberspace, swamping everything. My thoughts …
It is reputed that Sigmund Freud died asking this question: What do women want? Everything, I suppose. This week, I discovered one surprisingly specific answer. If I could take a pill that achieved the effects of daily exercise, I would. But my desire for a hale and limber golden age easily trumps my indolence, so …
As I sat listening to someone speak eloquently against an injustice he had never directly experienced—you know the kind of thing, a man condemning the oppression of women or a non-Jewish German speaking passionately against the Nazis—an evil little thought arose in my mind. I overheard myself smugly dismissing the speaker as a hitchhiker: What’s …
I love to be read to. If you stacked up all the hours my husband has read me essays from the New York of Review of Books while I cooked, I expect they would stretch into a solid month or more, a good long vacation in my brain. When a text enters awareness via human …
It seems even the basic lessons, the things we feel we know as well as our own names, have to be refreshed from time to time. I’ve been preaching the healing powers of dialogue all my adult life, so I’m a little taken aback to find myself amazed that it turns out to be true! …