Archive
Like Fire
Isn’t commuting daily by subway like nothing so much as pursuing a reluctant lover? You inhabit your starting point, envision your destination, and confidently plunge forward along well-laid pathways. Filled with hope and longing, capable of doubt and despair, and knowing (in your heart of hearts) that being given a moment to sit and catch [...]
Read MoreLast night (trying to meet this Friday deadline), I opened the program and spread out my notes. Since the week before, I had wanted to write something about the damage caused by the tornadoes in Oklahoma. I went online to review some of the details and was caught up in a maelstrom of Breaking News [...]
Read MoreThe pink and purple and white canopies I mentioned recently have mostly given way to leafy clouds, the piercing yellow-green of springtime. The hardiest bad-ass stems and tendrils are forcing themselves through cracks in sidewalks and retaining walls. Road and bridge repair crews have set up shop amid blooming orange traffic cones. College commencements and [...]
Read MoreIroning, like so many other domestic chores, has about it the air of religion. There is a compelling need for specific implements and special rituals, a curious balance of fire and water, a mix of dry and damp, and a fresh (unending!) supply of pristine garments — all looming overwhelmingly to wring order from chaos. [...]
Read MoreLong into each winter I reach a point where I am drawn to believe that the weather and I will never be warm again. I often make it through the holidays and the year end/beginning before this moment of existential despair overtakes me, most often after several days of unseasonable cold and unrelenting winds. I [...]
Read MoreWalking to the subway one recent morning, I saw a torn bit of plastic lying in the gutter: a common sign, found in any hardware store, made for routine use. This one had a jet-black background from which angry orange letters glared. It originally commanded “NO PARKING,” but all that remained (of insubstantial plastic) was [...]
Read MoreMourning the loss of Krystle, Lingzi, Martin, Sean ____________________ The week opened here with two bombs exploding and closed with the arduous pursuit of those responsible. The weight of our grief is incalculable. At the boundaries of life and death, and overwhelmed by brokenness, it is tempting to say that words fail. But that is [...]
Read More(1) Lawrence A. Zelenak, a professor of law at Duke University, is the author of Learning to Love Form 1040: Two Cheers for the Return-Based Mass Income Tax, in which he bravely describes the origins, history, and current complexity of the federal income tax. He also offers philosophical reasons and practical suggestions for changing the [...]
Read MoreDisembarking from a subway car one recent evening, I was engulfed by a chattering bunch of middle schoolers (all of eleven or twelve years old) returning from a soccer game. Bunched together, we climbed the steps to the station and I dutifully followed the pair of pink-socked legs that appeared at my eye level. How [...]
Read MoreI’d been encouraged, during the past week or so, by seeing more and more crocus flowers during my trips through town. The brave green leaves have been up for almost two weeks now, but the petals are a lovely new addition to the landscape — purple, yellow, white. Daffodils, too, and jonquils — though I’ve [...]
Read MoreA dear friend’s perceptive kindness (“if you need some inspiration”) brought this poem to my virtual doorstep earlier in the week. Some days prior, a friend at work was eager to go for lunch to report his pride in a complicated project successfully completed. Some days after, a colleague asked for help in pulling together [...]
Read MoreYesterday the New York Times reminded us: The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments next week in a pair of cases challenging laws relating to same-sex marriage. On Tuesday, lawyers will argue a challenge to California’s gay marriage ban, Proposition 8, and the next day, the justices will hear a challenge to the federal law [...]
Read MoreOne recent evening, late, I was quietly tired and on my way home from work. The subway car in which I was riding was about one-third full of equally quiet and tired passengers. We all, however, were unwillingly drawn into the cellphone call of an increasingly agitated woman in her late 20s. It was a [...]
Read MoreWhile completing a crossword puzzle recently, I came across the clue “Get Lost.” Scat, scram, scoot, skedaddle — all either too short or too long. The answer turned out to be two heartbreaking words: “GO HOME”. For a moment, though, didn’t you also conjure up sepia-toned images of Depression-era city kids skittering around on a [...]
Read MoreRiding a bus one evening last week, on my way to the grocery store, I couldn’t help but overhear two women talking. I’ve no idea whether they were earnestly measuring out the coming weeks of their spring semesters, appraising their future careers, or simply marking the remainder of the bus ride. “Don’t you have a [...]
Read MoreThe week, my workweek, has been all about numbers. Though we usually perform a budget review one-half the way through our fiscal year, business has been, well, busy and we’ve only now just paused, about two-thirds of the way in. If you’ve taught a child to cross the street, you could do a budget review, [...]
Read MoreChange was the watchword for these several recent days. Well, when is change ever not the way things are? It never ends. And so, I take great comfort from the three stanzas of Joyce Sutphen’s poem, Living in the Body, which parallel news and views that have been shared with me lately: Body is something [...]
Read MoreThis day is full of bulletins / pungent with warnings / turgid with urgency. Even the normally tranquil Oxford English Dictionary defines blizzard as “A furious blast of frost-wind and blinding snow, in which man and beast frequently perish”. Yikes. In the interest of safety, then, I am jumping offline and fleeing homeward to my [...]
Read MoreIt has been more than thirty concentric rings ago, but I remember the phrase very clearly. One of my professors, during an annual evaluation, offered a cleverly thesauric observation about my youthful demeanor and collegiate presence: “[he] tends to be wooden.” Even allowing for my customary quiet nature, youthful immaturity, and a somewhat tamped-down personality, [...]
Read MoreAt the very beginning of her sensibly provocative guide, The Writing Life, Annie Dillard describes the process: When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner’s pick, a woodcarver’s gouge, a surgeon’s probe. … You make the path boldly and follow it fearfully. You go where the [...]
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