I often get the sense that people are asking me questions they don’t want answers to. It’s a kind of social blindness I have, which is weird because my parents did this all the time. You’d think I’d be used to it, but somehow I never learned to tell when it’s best just to tell [...]
Archive for the ‘Conflict’ category
Be my guest
A sleeping bag and maybe a towel⎯that’s all we used to need. Crashing at a friend’s place required no great forethought⎯a few days’ notice, maybe. But combine age, bigger incomes, more complicated lives, and greater needs for privacy and independence, and all of a sudden hospitality is a fraught issue. It’s Monday morning as I [...]
Torn and Frayed
As I walked out of our building Sunday morning, I noticed some bits of paper scattered on the sidewalk. It was a photograph that someone had torn up and thrown on the ground. Curious, I felt compelled to pick up the pieces and re-assemble the picture. It’s impossible to know what percentage of torn-up photos [...]
Grudges
Not the big hurts and betrayals that you grieve over, nurse for years, take to therapy. Not the stuff of broken hearts. Just the little insults that continue to gnaw at you, sometimes years later. Sure, it takes energy to sustain a grudge, and usually it’s easier just to let the offense fade into the [...]
A worthy contest
Not all contests are worthy of one’s attention, and those that are worthy of attention do not deserve it in equal amounts. The best reason to pay attention to a contest is that its outcome truly matters — that it will affect the physical well-being of many non-contestants. Wars are the paradigmatic case here; elections [...]
Influence
I was quite old before I realized that I was the only person at my church who listened to secular music. I must have been in seventh grade, because I clearly remember a Sunday School classmate asking me what my favorite album was at the time, and I said Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Of course. [...]
July 12, 2007
July 12, 2007 I don’t typically write about current events and politics here at TGW, but the leaked audio and video taken from the turret camera of an Apache gunship killing at least twelve people, including two Reuters reporters, seems so explosive and has weighed so heavily on my mind since it was first released [...]
Out like a…
By now you’ve likely noticed, been charmed by, and grown rather tired of this image: A WWII graphic that the English government’s Ministry of Information commissioned for use in the case of a Nazi occupation, the poster was set aside and virtually forgotten until it was rediscovered by a bookseller about ten years ago. He [...]
Humorless
I fear that I’m getting a reputation for being not-fun in my old age. Sure, I’m only 30, but it’s clear that a whole landscape of human interactions has closed off to me. My interest in movies and television has waned. And I really don’t enjoy dating as much as I used to. It all [...]
Bye bye baby
I’ve moved through life assuming that giving birth was always a possibility. And now, at nearly 43, I have to sever that option or cling on to it. Severing would mean better physical health, the resolution of medical issues, and a life liberated from menstruation. Now that I spend more time menstruating than not, I [...]
