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! …
Jonathan Demme’s new Neil Young concert film, Prairie Wind, is out on DVD, so I rented it. I like much of Young’s music, especially the melancholy, sweet songs, but I wasn’t prepared to be blown away by the totality of the artist and his art. The film documents two nights on which Young and a …
I recently watched a fascinating documentary jointly broadcast on the Sundance Channel and Court TV. The Human Behavior Experiments was directed by Alex Gibney (who also made the excellent Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room). Now I can’t stop thinking about it. In the compass of an hour, Gibney and his collaborators touched down …
First, a disclaimer. At no time did I personally utter this sentence: “Never trust anyone over 30.” (FYI, it was coined by Jack Weinberg, whose 1964 arrest for violating prohibitions against political advocacy on the UC Berkeley campus ignited the Free Speech Movement, and who—at 65 or so—is still a dedicated environmental activist, having had …
Once again, I’ve been given an opportunity to visit another world, the strange and exotic land of teen culture. I’ve been assisting the New York-based organization Global Kids by reading and writing about 133 essays by high school students on how digital media affects their lives. You can download my report, read the essays and …
There is no more powerful reminder that something has value than to see another risk everything to embrace it. Brave immigrants have been marching this week through my memories, reminding me that the essence of human freedom is to stand and be counted. My ancestors have been immigrants much longer than I know or can …
Next week is Passover, celebrating the liberation from slavery in Egypt described in the biblical book of Exodus. Like all Jewish holidays, it is a reminder. As we remove the chametz (leavened bread and similar foods not eaten during the holiday season) from our homes, we also search our souls, digging out whatever is puffed-up …
Yesterday’s New York Times reported on a study the Center on Education Policy will release tomorrow. The article’s headline says it all: “Schools Cut Back Subjects to Push Reading and Math.” CEP found that since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, “71 percent of the nation’s 15,000 school districts had reduced the …