And It Shows

Throughout our days, the either-or fallacy is often presented to us as, “There are two kinds of people…” Ella Fitzgerald crooned about the two kinds of people she could not understand in Duke Ellington’s 1941 song, “Rocks in My Bed”—“that’s a deceitful woman and…

Sesame Street Turns 50

you are likely familiar with Sesame Street, the beloved children’s television show conceived by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett in 1966

Deep in Our Refrigerator*

Dating app based on the content of one's refrigerator

The Lifecycle Adorns Us

Both women bought “DNA jewelry” in the shape of teardrops–one to honor a life departed, the other to commemorate the lives she nourished. My mother Carla chose a silver necklace for herself and her younger sister to house the ashes of their beloved mother, my late grandmother. Jenna, my best…

Seeing the Invisible

Leave it to mechanical engineering and physics professors to produce “Graphene: The Musical” to the tune of J.J. Cale’s 1976 bluesy rock ballad, “Cocaine.” The song, of course, Cale wrote for guitarist Eric Clapton on his legendary album (and nickname), Slowhand, in 1977:   If…

What Goes Around Comes Around: Economic Cycles and Their Effects, Part I

In Mark Twain’s 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, co-written with his neighbor Charles Dudley Warner, Twain describes cycles as follows: “History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.” So,…

The Lender of Last Resort

To know my granddad John Dee Hammond, you would first need to know about the little wooden lockbox, painted two shades of grey, dove and ash, affixed to the exterior of his modest two-bedroom, one-bathroom house in Clinton, Missouri. The modest lockbox was secured, and I use that verb loosely,…

The Universality of White Racism

Given that the book was written for a white audience, how did I feel as a person of color reading it? The simple answer is mixed.

Pink Slips

While fewer people may be collecting unemployment benefits, the economic blow is no less painful. The statistics on women’s unemployment rates are often reported as lower than men’s, yet this statistical difference often downplays women’s layoff experiences.

Is Rape the New Campus Rage?

Unwanted Advances is a provocative, if frustrating, read.

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