New Harmony
Our marriage has changed the way the town has, stacking up dreams, failures, exciting beginnings, convergences of interest, losses, and new capacities.
Dispatches
Take Humanities for Your Health
We cannot mend our minds and bodies without understanding the stories they tell.... “You can’t get to healing if you don’t recognize pain.”
Singing with Jerome Rothenberg
Dipping into the freaky voices gathered by Jerome Rothenberg for new song lyrics, I found myself in bottomless waters.
Documentary Shows the Secret of Umberto Eco’s Personal Library
This documentary lets Eco eternally stalk his prey of a desired volume in his beautifully utilitarian library. But most of the film exists to let him continue to express a fierce belief in print culture.
Rocking the Spectrum
A gym for kids who are neurodivergent--and kids who are not. When you make room for difference, it softens.
Pea Soup with Art Garfunkel
I watched Art Garfunkel smell the diner and think about walking away from it. Then he stood up, put a small pile of money on the table next to a white bowl with what appeared to be the dregs of pea soup, and prepared to walk away.
Just for a Minute, This Country Feels Like Itself Again
The new citizens’ faces suggest every other part of the world, yet as they recite, all the accents blend into a single voice—that sounds American. Which feels almost eerie until I remember the unity this nation was supposed to make possible.
Pulp Fiction is Officially an “Old Movie” Now
Quentin Tarantino’s most identifiable feature as a writer-director is his characters’ talking, talking, talking, often followed by violence triggered not by the talking, really, but by accident, coincidence, or stupidity.
Empathy, It Seems, Is Overrated
(Shutterstock) https://commonreader.washu.edu/app/uploads/2024/04/empathy.mp3 A heart willing to welcome someone else’s pain inside. A brain with the superpower of unlocking other psyches. Skin so tender, anybody’s mood will brush against yours—then penetrate. Empathy seems a noble trait, potent and generous, an instant cure for injustice and xenophobia. I watch…
One Tree Is Enough
The tensions that wire our lives do not go dead. Every time I try to look away, they crop up again, disguised or insidious. But Sylvia Plimack Mangold fixed her gaze and stared them down.