I am glad my mother cannot see my house right now. First there was COVID, so why would I bother with beeswax and Swifters when the only person showing up was the mail carrier? I like Travis and value his opinion, but he is far too busy…
he question many ask about extraterrestrial life is not if but when we will find it. Back in 1997, Carl Sagan said, “There can be little doubt that civilizations more advanced than the earth’s exist elsewhere in the universe.” Just a few years ago, Ellen Stofan, director of the National Air and Space Museum and former chief scientist for NASA, predicted that “definitive evidence” of extraterrestrial life will be found in the next two decades.
Some books capture your imagination; "Zero Zone" locked mine in an art gallery. An adroit literary thriller, its prose has a clean, well-lit spaciousness, yet the sensory images are so rich that every page is splashed with color.
The United States is an extraordinary nation. Not an exceptional one, but an extraordinary one. It is not based on blood or history or religion. It is based on an idea, and on the rule of law. But if we do not agree on the implications of that idea or how that law should be interpreted, what are we?
Koenig learned how to craft a sentence from the literary lions of Washington University (Gass, Elkin, Nemerov). He then became a foreign service officer, a reporter in the Washington bureau of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a press agent at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. He knows a lot about the gathering of information—and the spreading of disinformation.
This doll, Maya, has nothing to do with barbiturates or sex or any of the other adult themes that washed right over me in the movie. Nor do her companions, who I discover are part of a series called Inspiring Women. I have rushed to the Barbie website, and tennis star Billie Jean King is here, along with astronaut Sally Ride, artist Frida Kahlo, NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, and activist Rosa Parks.
Richard had humanity, but he deliberately discards it, death by death. And while I cannot excuse his bleak, inexorable decision, I find myself mourning it with an empathy today’s politics have not engendered.
Hank Aaron was an incredible player. He lived a long life. And he got his due, his accolades, his recognition, while he was alive. That is good. So many Black players from the Negro Leagues never did. Those Black barbers from my boyhood knew more than I did.
My sons are everything to me, and I appreciate any remaining chances to share in their understandings. Like many things in American life now, this also is a tug between the conservative (preserving their safety, and our money, time, and effort) and the liberal (being open to new views and experiences).