“The kids were sitting there going ‘Bah, Meh, Duh,’” groans a retired reading teacher, explaining that the pendulum of teaching theory has swung yet again. The way she learned, which fanned the love of reading and presented whole words for kids to gobble up, has given way to “the science of reading,” which […]
It can be confusing to civilians that the branches of the U.S. military (Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard, and now Space Force) have different but often overlapping missions. Branches often train together in the field and cross-train in each other’s schools. I served in the Army, for example, but […]
The march of great voices through time and fashion is arguably as revealing about our culture as what we consider great art and architecture. But while art and architecture are so often shared communally in museums and public places, an abiding passion for certain voices has the unique quality of being both […]
Done right, philosophy is as charming, irritating, and deliberately provocative as a toddler asking, “But why? Why? Why?” Yet too often it is presented only in rigid black letters, a gray page of text stripped of imagination, the ideas a strain to visualize. Becky Moon intends to change that. She started as a […]
This is what it is like to be a layperson in the Years of COVID. “So my primary care doc said the vaccine loses effectiveness after six months.” “That’s what my pharmacist said, too. But nobody’s saying anything about a new booster.” “If you’re healthy, you don’t need a booster anyway, right?” “But I […]
Once upon a time an artist made something entertaining but true about life, friendship, and imagination. The medium he used to communicate was often not taken seriously, and the money men tried to dictate his and everyone else’s design and content. Many readers found it remarkable that he used his “comic,” which […]
Except for childhood asthma no doubt exacerbated by smoking as an adult and a series of rocky marriages, Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) led a mostly idyllic life. The child of a wealthy bank president, he grew up on California’s sunny Pacific Coast. He traveled Europe as a teen, then attended a string of Ivy League […]
“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 […]
Avast: Spoilers dead ahead. A revival of a play of Moby-Dick, adapted and directed by David Catlin, is in its last week at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. The original production was staged at Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago in 2015 and again in 2017. This one is a road […]
I knew some cool dads when I was raising my daughter in St. Louis County near the beginning of this century. One dad—he worked in food distribution—started taking his child to rock concerts just before I did. He gave me the heads up that I would like the music much more than I […]
