A professor I knew was very interested in the ways class got represented in fiction. He pointed out that due to the vagaries of fashion there would always be new markers of it available to writers. One of his favorites then was “bad teeth,” by which he meant crooked or less-than-white teeth. (This used to […]
“Diversity, it turns out, goes to the heart of how to do research and innovation effectively.” –Fred Guteri, “Diversity in Science: Why It Is Essential for Excellence” Jane Goodall was selected by Louis Leakey exactly for her lack of scientific training. “He wanted someone with a mind uncluttered and unbiased by theory, who […]
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Hot Wheels, the little cars that are the number-one selling toy in the world. Manufacturer Mattel has a 16-city tour in progress that includes a design contest, life-size fleet, die-cast historical display, and Forza X-Box gaming. My mother, who was 42 years old when I was born (her […]
If you use social media, you know the difficulties. How to feel about those who love something you love but who, you believe in the sub-basement of your heart, have missed the point? A childhood friend, educated, prosperous, posts a tribute to Aretha Franklin on his wall. “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” he writes. The only problem: he’s not […]
The early childhood center director crowed that I would soon be privy to my 16-month-old daughter’s “first” social media account, HiMama, which would include photos of her day in the toddler room, diaper changes, snack and meal updates, fieldtrips, and more. Little did the director know Luci already had a private Instagram account where I […]
Last spring, in my swan-song semester as a laid-off community college professor, I taught a first-year composition class every Wednesday night till 10 p.m. My students were from all over the world—Albania, Bhutan, Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, Sudan, and the United States. Some of my students were refugees, one lucky woman won a green card from […]
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! A municipal garden is a beautiful contradiction, an embodiment of the struggle between nature and human control. Visitors to The Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis on a recent afternoon stepped from the welcome center into the Garden grounds, where the skyscraper glint of the Climatron […]
When Aretha Franklin remade Otis Redding’s 1965 song, “Respect,” in 1967, she transformed a sexist song of domestic submission into an empowering anthem for the civil rights and women’s rights movements. It became a ballad for the people, especially anyone who was or is marginalized or oppressed and, quite frankly, sick and tired of feeling sick […]
David Owen wrote a 2012 personal history “Scars” as “a life in injuries” for The New Yorker. This short piece was inspired by Owen’s essay. The faintest imprint of honeycombed scar tissue crisscrosses the back of both of my knuckles. Family folklore has it that while my mother was giving birth to my sister […]
Will Mackin became a literary friend when we both wrote briefly for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. His excellent “Dispatches from Iraq” there (written as Roland Thompson) were sharply observed and sometimes surreal. “I can understand the dogs, too,” he says in the final installment. “[One] looked at me and said, ‘Sometimes sedition, sometimes blight.’ Months later, after […]
