The (almost) end to the weeks, months and years of anxiety that have dogged us through the demoralizing and dangerous Trump years is well-timed for me. This is my 52nd posting on this site, a full year of entries to review and to ponder what they amount to and how they do and don’t intersect with one of the most consequential years in our history. The brain space is now available for such an...
There’s a time to speak and a time to be silent. This is the latter. I will add my voice to those of the many Facebook friends who complained this week that they couldn’t focus on their own work. The distraction of the then unresolved election shut out any thoughts other than those necessary for daily survival, so there were no brilliant new ideas crying out to be posted. Besides what is there to...
Most of you will be reading this on the day before the election or during a time when the outcome is still uncertain. The election has occupied so much of our collective brain space for the past year that it’s hard to imagine writing about anything else at this moment, but I’m not sure what thread of the tangle that’s accumulated I want to honor in my eleventh hour wrap up. Ages ago I directed a...
As the weather begins to tilt toward winter, one of the President’s lies that carries an especially toxic sting is that the pandemic is “rounding the corner.” The evidence to the contrary is everywhere in plain sight, both here at home and around the world. That means a continuation of the current constraints that most of us have resigned ourselves to, at least until spring, when the magical...
“The Army Rolls Out a New Weapon: Strategic Napping.” That was the headline on an October 1st article in the New York Times. I found it very heartening that the army, that repository of so much of our culture’s machismo, was lifting the stigma from an activity that has been seen as a sign of weakness, of – God Forbid – femininity. The army’s announcement joins those from various college campuses...