So many of us have been searching during the Trump years for ways to act on our opposition to his efforts to move the country toward authoritarianism. We’ve marched in the demonstrations and rallies that have grown larger each time we get out our signs and head downtown. We need to continue doing that. We’ve reached into our bank accounts to contribute to political candidates and organizations...
Next week marks the sixth anniversary of the launching of this blog. Since November 15, 2019, I have posted almost 300 entries. I thought at the start that my topic would be education, and indeed a number of the early entries fell under that heading. But in time, though I never abandoned my original focus, the topics became more varied – politics, books, autobiographical entries, etc. I could not...
This week’s entry may be on the short side. Rosellen and I have been working on a presentation for our Jewish group next Saturday that’s consumed most of my writing time this week. One of the books I comment on today is related to that presentation which I hope to give more space to next week. Yes, this is one of my occasional book talks, an opportunity for me to recommend some reading that has...
Way back in the early days of this blog, I posted a piece about a friend and I agreeing to shadow each other at work one day a year. We realized that we knew each other only in social settings and had just a superficial awareness of how we spent the bulk of our waking time during the work week. The same could be said of most of our friendships. For people whose work was such a central part of our...
There are two things on my mind today, so completely unrelated that no amount of imaginative bridging will bring them together. They both have weighty implications, but of vastly different kinds. Recently, the University of Chicago announced that it will not be accepting students in its Ph.D. programs in Humanities programs for the 26-27 academic year. There are two exceptions, not explained, for...