It is strange being in the city that, for over three hundred years, was the navel of the world… And not really caring. I arrived in London on October 1. Why I’m here has nothing to do with the Globe Theater or the tailors on Savile Row. Or the scones. Grief Tourism My fiancee had…
Category: A Piece of Our Minds
Wrong Tent: A Story of the Boy Scouts
It was a weekend camping trip with the Boy Scouts. Yes, I was a Boy Scout for a couple of years. The autumn leaves were fresh and crisp—mostly oak with some maple and ash and some other shapes besides. Sitting on the ground, we were all staring intently at some curious bit of nature while…
What it Means to Ban a Book
“Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself.” The only book my parents ever took away from me was Catcher in the Rye. There are a lot of reasons someone might want to take that book away from a child. But none of those were the reasons my parents confiscated it from me. My…
Sticking Your Nose in a Book
Do you think books mind when we read them? Here they are carrying on with their lives, being beautiful or terrible according to how they were written, and we come along and literally stick our noses into their business. There are some people—scholars, philosophers, authors—who treat books as if they were alive. I once attended…
Teaching my Kid about September 11
September 11, 2001 was a bright, clear, sunny morning. Washington DC doesn’t let you forget it was built on a swamp, and it was a morning where I remember appreciating the impending change of seasons, and feeling that the oppressive summer humidity was fading. There wasn’t anything all that unusual about the day. Just little…
The View from the Wheelchair
In college, one of my friends used to say “dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire.” We would go dancing at least once a week, almost every Saturday night was reserved for going to Tracks, a big gay dance club in Washington DC. Some weeks, when money was tighter, we’d go early, when…
Never Have I Ever… Reviewed a TV Show
So here’s why I like Never Have I Ever. I’ll start by saying that I’m a Jewish person who is in a relationship with an Indian woman—actually a Tamil woman, so she’s not far off from the main character of this show, except for the technicality of being born and raised half a world away….
Erika’s Big Think #3
“I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper and I was free.“ I don’t usually think of myself as a teacher. I love teaching, but I also knew there was no way I could handle classroom politics, and so, in spite of encouragement from my parents to consider teaching as a career,…
Coal Miners’ Strike in Tuscaloosa enters 4th month
“Yet Conscience is a nobleman, the best in us, and a friend.” By Adam Katz Solidarity takes work and engagement. So imagine my surprise when I saw a story covered by an independent media outlet to the effect that there has been a coal miners’ strike going on in Alabama for four months, and no…
Finding Myself on the Shelf: Uncovering My Own Identity through Queer Literature
“We dance around in a ring and suppose But the Secret sits in the middle and knows” -Robert Frost Fear of being Found Out No one knows what you’re thinking when you’re wandering the library shelves. For me, they were a safe space when I had the kind of questions that no one could answer…