“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
Ten years into the presence and the power of this man, and I am afraid for what I am becoming. No need for me to go over again what he is. After Trump’s response to the murders of Rob and Michelle Reiner, Devid Remnick captures him perfectly: “And so it is worth asking, do you know anyone quite as malevolent? At your place of work? On your campus? A colleague? […]
read more
When I was 4 or 5, my conscience was awakened in a moment of wonder and horror. That combination created an instant repulsion that felt then, and now in retrospect, to be primal, a fundamental moment when I saw something terribly wrong and knew what was right. The birds did it. Two strings of wire hanging from a scrub tree at the edge of a road that descended like a […]
read more
In my magpie way of reading now, 3 or 4 books going at once including recorded titles that tell me stories or lodge history into my mind through a voice – then always a book of poetry, books about the Revolutionary War, 1942, the Bronx in 1977, then a friend’s novel, articles from The Atlantic, the Times, the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books and just before […]
read more
I took nine months off when I retired from teaching. Then I started working again. I’ve held a job for 59 consecutive years. This is the complete list in chronological order: Snow shoveler; busboy at 14 at a restaurant where the husband and wife co-owners were both alcoholics and often screamed at each other directly above the main dining room where Sunday lunch was being served; produce boy and bagger […]
read more
