“Why do women always go for the arrogant jerks?” Implicit in my husband’s exasperated question: Why is steady virtue not sexy? I shrug, as though this propensity is just as odd and puzzling to me, and point out that his steady virtue has delighted me for thirty years now. I do not mention […]
It is the nicest apology I have ever received. “Babe,” my husband says, “I am so sorry. I watched you paint and said, ‘You could sell these!’ But last night I heard somebody on the radio saying that nobody can just have a relaxing hobby anymore because if you’re any good, people start […]
When people talk about large-scale social crisis in the United States the topic eventually gravitates straight toward marriage. Or more precisely, the current lack of it. If children are in crisis it is because marriage is in crisis. If loneliness is epidemic it is because marriage is in decline. And if people are poor […]
The phrase “emotional labor” was new to me, but its practice is not. Emotional labor is that extra layer of effort expended to please, soothe, and accommodate others. Tacitly women’s work, it is the nine-to-five equivalent of dishes, dusting, childcare, eldercare, and, in traditional marriages, husband-coddling. Emotional labor is tossing aloe-softened tissues and […]
What does a musical artist do in the midst of a bloody war? Eddie Balchowsky was twenty-one and planning on a future as a concert pianist. He had studied three years at the University of Illinois (before getting booted because he had broken into a music studio). He wound up in Chicago, working […]
My younger son wanted to visit the Goodwill Outlet in the city before he goes back to school. He convinced me to drive by saying they would have wall mirrors, which I collect from Facebook Marketplace, and even possibly a chair. He wanted to look for thrifted clothing. Teens love washed-out […]
I used to wonder if politics boiled down to temperament. Were liberals just bleeding hearts who preferred compassion to logic? Were conservatives just devoted rule followers nervous about change? Then my mental diagram turned into a wild doodle, with fat circles at the edges for those even more rigid or more woke, and […]
She served on the highest court of the land as its first female justice. She sustained a “nondoctrinaire, context-attentive approach,” rare today, that kept her decisions aligned with the social consensus. A moderate Republican appointed by President Ronald Reagan, she received the nation’s highest medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from Democratic President […]
During the early days of the pandemic, my ex-partner passed time by tracing his family heritage back four generations. The majority of his relatives, he claimed, did not have ties to the Deep South and they were not remembered as poor slaves or sharecroppers. They lived comfortably as farmers in Ironton, […]
The mass exodus of Black St. Louisans in recent years continues to raise eyebrows and stir concerns that question where longtime residents are going, but mostly, why they are leaving. This city’s complexities regarding race, class, and land further muddle the reasoning behind Black residents’ migratory patterns and their move to St. Louis […]