I have taken a poll of my friends, and the results are in: no one who actually knows me finds me intimidating. In fact, it seems I have a reputation for putting people at ease in conversation. I felt the need to conduct this research this because I have been getting some strange results in …
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 …
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, …
Dear Car Fairy: I like to think of myself as dauntless (in certain domains, anyway: the only bungee jumping you’ll catch me doing is the figurative kind). For the last two years, I’ve been navigating the new realms that open up when you leave a three decades-long marriage and discover how the world works for …
I’ve been on the road for speaking engagements, the proximate cause of my recent blog pause. I tend to write here when something worth sharing crystallizes in my mind. But travels notwithstanding, the truth is that just lately, it’s been hard to find the crystals in the fog of reactivity. My subjects today are how …
In winter darkness, can you close your eyes and remember the taste of a ripe apricot? Can you recall the bittersweet green scent left on your hand as you harvest a tomato an instant before the bursting-point? I’ve reached the six-month point in my online dating experience, and it feels like a small milestone: no …
“Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” Antonio Gramsci At a New Year’s gathering of friends last night, we spent the last hour before midnight sharing our answers to two questions: “What gives you hope?” And “What is your mission in 2011?” The answers ranged across the map of the human heart. Some people …
Someone sent me a clip of the comedian Dave Attell on “The Jimmy Fallon Show,” responding to the host’s query about his holiday plans. “Christmas is a long day for the Jews,” Attell says. “Very long.” Then he takes viewers on a quick tour of Fallon’s set through Jewish eyes, and for a few seconds, …
We are having a conversation about class in this country, but not everyone knows it. For instance, joblessness means one thing to a person whose unemployment insurance has run out and quite another to, say, a business leader who worships constantly growing profits, repeatedly cutting jobs to expand them. Our national conversation about class is …
Something wonderful happened to me yesterday. I got a call from the director of an organization I’ve been working with, who said that a check had arrived from an anonymous donor, earmarked to support the new book I’m working on. My new book’s working title is But Beautiful: Art, Eros, and The World We Make. …