When I see someone whose body is twisted into an unfamiliar shape or cannot move as mine does, I often flinch, then try to hide the involuntary recoil. Afterward, I lie to myself, insisting that this is empathy. It is not. It is stark fear. Why? Because I am not sure I would have the same resilience. There is also a tinge of survivor’s guilt—I escaped their fate on what grounds, exactly?
(Photo by Gordon via Flickr) In 1985, Bayer patented a synthetic insecticide that soon showed up in its garden products. Imidacloprid belonged to a new class of chemicals, neonicotinoids, neonics for short. They block neural receptors, killing an insect or, with milder exposure, causing tremors, convulsion, an inability…
In juvenile facilities, more than seven percent of residents reported, on a 2018 survey, being sexually victimized during the previous year. Four percent reported use of force or coercion, either by other youth or by staff. “They get away with it,” Bankston says, “because boys, and men, don’t tell. And because no one wants to know.”
I am glad my mother cannot see my house right now. First there was COVID, so why would I bother with beeswax and Swifters when the only person showing up was the mail carrier? I like Travis and value his opinion, but he is far too busy…
he question many ask about extraterrestrial life is not if but when we will find it. Back in 1997, Carl Sagan said, “There can be little doubt that civilizations more advanced than the earth’s exist elsewhere in the universe.” Just a few years ago, Ellen Stofan, director of the National Air and Space Museum and former chief scientist for NASA, predicted that “definitive evidence” of extraterrestrial life will be found in the next two decades.
Some books capture your imagination; "Zero Zone" locked mine in an art gallery. An adroit literary thriller, its prose has a clean, well-lit spaciousness, yet the sensory images are so rich that every page is splashed with color.
The United States is an extraordinary nation. Not an exceptional one, but an extraordinary one. It is not based on blood or history or religion. It is based on an idea, and on the rule of law. But if we do not agree on the implications of that idea or how that law should be interpreted, what are we?
Koenig learned how to craft a sentence from the literary lions of Washington University (Gass, Elkin, Nemerov). He then became a foreign service officer, a reporter in the Washington bureau of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a press agent at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. He knows a lot about the gathering of information—and the spreading of disinformation.
This doll, Maya, has nothing to do with barbiturates or sex or any of the other adult themes that washed right over me in the movie. Nor do her companions, who I discover are part of a series called Inspiring Women. I have rushed to the Barbie website, and tennis star Billie Jean King is here, along with astronaut Sally Ride, artist Frida Kahlo, NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, and activist Rosa Parks.
Richard had humanity, but he deliberately discards it, death by death. And while I cannot excuse his bleak, inexorable decision, I find myself mourning it with an empathy today’s politics have not engendered.
We have just broken a 4,000-year-old tradition that began with the ancient Babylonians.
After centuries of art and ritual, color symbolism is so richly layered that we can pick what we like, impose our own symbolism. Maybe Kamala Harris has ascended to our version of royalty, and the purple was her robe, sans ermine trim. Maybe she was preparing for a brazen old age, as clubby women do. Or bracing to be wounded in battle.