Like a drumbeat, the news these days delivers a repeated shock to the moral and ethical system of our body politic, calling out an answering question: do you believe this? How is it that the guardians of entrenched privilege, who have already seized so much of our commonwealth, are so shamelessly and persistently willing to …
The stories our leaders tell us matter, probably almost as much as the stories our parents tell us as children, because they orient us to what is, what could be, and what should be; to the worldviews they hold and to the values they hold sacred. Our brains evolved to “expect” stories with a particular …
I’ve been thinking about it steadily since a friend said it a week ago. “I know it sounds far-out, but I think they’re blackmailing Obama. I think they took him aside right after the election and said that if he wanted his family to live out his term, he’d better toe the line.” My friend …
Here in Richmond, California, we have our official Independence Day fireworks on the 3rd of July, which I like. Not too many people, not as many drunks on the road as on the 4th. As it happens, I live on the harbor where the fireworks barge is anchored, so it as easy thing to stroll …
Last Sunday I read a piece on executive pay in the business section of the New York Times. Ever since, I have been wondering how to write about it. Here are some of the images I did not want to include: bad apples spoiling a whole barrel; pirates (and other types of marauding bandits); weeds …
I was thrilled to see a new film on one of my heroes (and I am a woman of few heroes, it must be admitted), the great writer and thinker Paul Goodman, who died in 1972. Watching Jonathan Lee’s Paul Goodman Changed My Life was like spending an hour and half in the company of …
Gender is not a two-party system, that much is clear. As with almost all such categories, you find more variation within groups than between them. Some men like football and guns, while others are into cooking and fashion—and the same goes for women. No matter how you parse it, gender is a clock rather than …
Gil Scott-Heron died on Friday, and that is a sad, sad sentence to write. If you are familiar with his music, then you know what I’m talking about; and if you’re not, you can begin to remedy that by following the links in this essay. (Listen to the beautiful “Rivers of My Fathers” from 1974’s …
The world didn’t end yesterday (unless the next world includes a bus from New York to Philadelphia equipped with the electrical outlets and wifi that enabled me to write this essay). Yes, I’ve been on the road all spring, a condition that tends to impair my ability to focus on a single topic long enough …
I’m watching the Death-of-Bin-Laden blogs unfurl, and my mind keeps wandering away from them. Instant reactions to the news drop like petals from a dying flower as new information emerges: was Bin Laden armed? Was torture used to find his whereabouts? The whole process seems designed to calibrate some precise reading of responsibility and righteousness, …