The occasional validation of clichés and other well-worn phrases by scientific studies is one of life’s unsung oddities if not glories. No one conveys an idea without words to hold them. In the curious case of pain, however, words do some impressive heavy lifting. Clichés about pain are—and, sorry, this cannot be […]
The photo on Facebook shows an older gentleman asleep with a cat on his chest, both smiling in their slumber. The caption explains that the man is the poster’s father, and that this is the father’s “last picture and just that evening, he was no more and took away a part of […]
The first little piggy to leave for market is the big toe. It is the first toe stubbed, the first stepped on by your first, inevitably clumsy dance partner. And it was the first feature that distinguished us from the rest of the hairy apes. Yet poets rhapsodize about elegant hands, […]
“She has no inner voice.” A stark sentence, a friend explaining someone’s emotional inconsistency. It stayed with me, stripped of its context, for days. Was it possible to not have an inner voice, a self that was busy connecting experiences and memories, stringing together a continuous personhood? “When the voice that links the […]
Early in grade school, I was solemnly initiated into the ritual. Elmer’s glue had to be smeared all over one’s finger, the inside of the wrist, or possibly the whole hand, then allowed to dry—blowing on it was permitted—and slowly, deliciously, peeled off. This even topped peeling sunburned skin, because that ended up […]
Entwined bodies breathing heat into cool marble. Poetry wrapping grief in soft truth. Literature that grapples with suffering of every kind. The humanities have always stolen their abstractions from the physical self. It is time for them to give back. Dr. Rebecca Messbarger, a professor of Italian, and Dr. Patricia Olynyk, who holds […]
A mom carries a sweet-faced blond toddler into We Rock the Spectrum, hoping to celebrate. “Happy birthday, my dude,” says the Fenton gym’s owner, Lyla Novakowski. He pulls back a little. “Oh, I’m sorry. That was too much. I get it. I have a son you can’t sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to.” She continues speaking, […]
Dear Jeannette: It is with great pleasure that I am inviting you to attend my oath ceremony for becoming a U.S Citizen scheduled on April 12 at 8:00 am at Saint Louis District Court. I understand that it could be challenging to make it happen as it might require other logistics…. […]
Strong feelings shaded yesterday’s total solar eclipse in North America, ranging from worries about terrorism against big crowds gathered in rural areas, where first responders would be overwhelmed, to fervent hopes for the rapture. Maybe it was because I was living farther away from the ominously-named band of totality in the eclipse of 2017, […]
When news of Daniel Kahneman’s March 27 death at the age of ninety hit my first thought was to hang my head in sadness at the passing of a great mind. My second thought soon afterward was that I had to read, for a second time, the Princeton psychologist’s best-selling (and rightly […]
