Technology gave us a hybrid of image, spoken word, and text that is altogether new, electric in every sense of the word. Vision is still our culture’s dominant sense, but movement and soundtrack give it far more power than Gutenberg could.
Cynics will explain the recent exchange of kindness in Darwinian fashion, as either an attempt to keep the species alive or a “reciprocal altruism” that does a kindness hoping to count on one in return. But in my experience, whenever people are forced to deal with something that dwarfs their trivial problems and lets all the tiny busyness drop away, they often react with kindness.
For centuries, we have tried to retain some power over this process of elimination; to pretend our feces is fragrant; to separate ourselves from our waste as cleanly as possible.
Masks express almost as much as our mouths once did, but what they say depends on your point of view.
Dave "Tuffy" Cabusora hopes that DeJoy’s recent claim, after being put on the spot, that he will authorize overtime as needed will get things back on track. Before DeJoy, postal trucks made two stops at Tuffy’s house, every day. That stopped a month ago.
In the end, "Salvation City" is a coming-of-age story. Its focus comes in tight, as Sigrid Nunez always does, on a single person, in this case a young boy struggling to grow up under extreme circumstances.
The National Center for Education Statistics says there will be about 16.5 million students taking classes at undergraduate institutions this fall, which is down by six percent from a decade ago. Still, that is some four million freshmen, and by my calculation most of…
All of us who can do so comfortably, without risking our mental or emotional health or that of a possible baby, must pledge to drink a little champagne every week. We are drinking more in the pandemic anyway, n’est-ce pas? The bubbles will cheer us up far faster than those grim vodka tonics.
Recent daytrips with my sons made me recognize a category of historical monument I had not considered much: the overenthusiastic mea culpa. The first was in my hometown of Herrin, Illinois. A stone recently erected in the cemetery marks the graves of “scab” workers murdered in 1922, during a…
Simply imagining pleasant aspects of the past can make us feel like they are present again.