There have been a couple of news items recently that have led me to start conversations about how certain journalists are racist. I posted a few things on Facebook, and brought them up to people I know, thinking that of the people I know, they’re at least the sort who would acknowledge that these are [...]
Archive for the ‘Conflict’ category
A little fiction
Here is a thing I wrote. I hope you like it. The Lottery It wasn’t until the jackpot hit $62 million that Sharon even considered buying a ticket. Until that point, she’d never really paid attention to the lottery. As far as she was concerned, “Powerball” might be some obscure Olympic event dominated by Romanians. [...]
Today is Victory Day
It is only in the last few years that, thanks to one of our resident Russophiles, LP, I have come to appreciate a good May 9th party. May 9th, as you may know, is the day that Russia and the other former Soviet republics celebrate as Victory Day, when the Allies finally overcame the Nazis [...]
The yellow wallpaper
It’s been close to two years now since I bought my first house. It’s a ninety year-old Craftsman-style home on Main Street in a small city in Wisconsin, full of hand-rubbed plaster walls, oak built-ins, and birdseye maple floors. Despite my occasional restlessness and a love for urban life, this is well and truly my [...]
Is this editorial cartoon objectionable?
Apologies in advance to those who believe it is: This cartoon ran in the student newspaper of the University of North Carolina, a decision for which the editor was assailed. (The cartoon was drawn by a syndicated editorial cartoonist, not a student.) Questions: – Was it wrong for the student paper to run [...]
Kony 2012 – the musical
I trust you’ve all been following the strange story of Kony 2012, the half-hour video that went viral last week? The 83 million views, the criticism of its makers for overstating the strength of Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, the subsequent very public meltdown of the lead filmmaker Jason Russell? I [...]
Stop him! He’s getting away!
I searched and searched because I was sure I must have written something about this before here, but I can’t find it. Oh, who am I kidding? All my posts are basically meditations on the same five or six things. I’m OK with that! Whenever I hear someone say, often in a voice that betrays [...]
An uncomfortably sincere confession, but what the hell.
Years ago, one of my students took me completely aback when she claimed, “People don’t change until it’s too painful not to.” I thought about that for a long time. Is it true? Are we really so reluctant to disturb the status quo, even if it’s unhappy? Are we ever capable of something more? Without [...]
Notes from Downtown
Not too long after those marches we went to in DC that so effectively stopped the war in Iraq, a friend of mine said one of those sentences that got pasted on my brain like a bumper sticker*. “Chanting in unison,” he said, “makes me ambivalent about, oh, just about everything.” I had felt this [...]
