Defiant Happiness
Does joy flow from temperament, then, or from grace? What does it matter? Joy defies gravity. Poised at the edge of a cliff, you need it more than ever.
By Jeannette Cooperman
Why Woke Language Backfires
If this is our notion of inclusivity, we are doomed.
Being Funny
There are indeed joke-telling and joke-writing techniques, but the comic sensibility cannot be taught. Finding something funny in the first place—seeing the absurdity, the irony, the analogy, the edge—is what matters, and it emerges from a combination of detachment, affinity, and wry intelligence.
Wild Flowers
Wildflowers are simple. They are flowers that grow in the wild, not where we demand them to grow. They do not obediently line our sidewalks, arrange themselves by order of height in our mulched beds, fill our wrought iron boxes, spill over our terra cotta pots. Wild means self-determined, free, priceless.
Do We Make Ourselves Too Comfortable?
Comfort is supposed to follow a challenge, not replace one. Tension, risk, and physical or emotional discomfort are parts of larger experiences that are worth having, so there is no need to dread or avoid them. With a shift in focus, they shrink in proportion to the part that matters.
Naming Names
Even in this time of flux, with fluid identities and avatars that split us into separate selves, names write code for who we are. We bear someone’s name, take someone’s name, carry on a name, drop one. Names, in other words, have weight. They arrive with little suitcases that we roll along for the rest of our lives.
Land Where Our Children Kill
Instead of isolating specific, idiosyncratic causes, we have to look at the larger framework. Because something about where U.S. society has landed is giving dark emotions more of a foothold. Resentment and despair are not new. Guns are not new. But shootings at this level and frequency are.
“Making Memories”
The memories I treasure tend to follow some sort of risk or effort; they feel earned. Like making a painting or a sweater or a wooden box, they rewarded and commemorated an investment of time, patience, sweat, courage, and attention.
Pushy Marketing
Marketers are throwing themselves at us. Repeatedly. And because we drop newspaper subscriptions and fast-forward through commercials and prefer streaming to broadcast and block ads on our computers, marketing has become a flat-out wrestling match.
We Are All Becoming Conspiracy Theorists
Decades ago, Hannah Arendt wrote of a “common world” that could only exist if “differences of position and the resulting variety of perspectives notwithstanding, everybody is always concerned with the same object.” Now the common world has exploded.
Frank Lloyd Wright Drew Them a Nice Little House
Wright has figured out how to build small, affordable homes he could be proud of. He calls them Usonian, because they capture the democratic spirit of the United States. They are simple—no paint, stucco, or wallpaper; no basement, attic, or garage.
Turning Away From Abstraction
The word “abstract” means to remove something; to condense; to lack a concrete, physical existence. Abstraction is supremely useful—but it should not wind up more highly valued than the world from which it abstracts.