Good people, I’ve been asked to say something at a wedding. The wedding of two people I introduced. One person was the good friend of my former upstairs neighbor in my apartment; the other person was the ex-girlfriend of a friend who has since fallen off the radar. She moved in with me after they [...]
I grew up in a family that swears. When I was four years old, my grandmother (not much of a swearer, herself) asked me not to say “fuck” around my 18-year-old cousin, because he might be offended by it. I suspect that she would likely have been more embarrassed than he would have [...]
I am reading a book about a human who falls in love with a vampire. It is summer novel, wonderfully trashy with page after page of “should I?” or “shouldn’t I?” plucked like petals in endless dilemmas. The vampire is cold and beautiful. The girl is soft and spunky. Their relationship somehow transcends triteness under [...]
It’s that time of year. With two weeks to go, our students are scrambling to finish their research papers, desperately trying to eke out that A or B—or, in some cases, just pass the class. Inevitably, and unfortunately, one or two or seventeen of our students will be desperate enough to cheat. Perhaps a few [...]
New York seems, to me, to differ from other major world cities in the recyclability (is that even a word?) of its symbols — especially its architecture and public art. To get what I mean, consider the Louvre by contrast. You experience it as an art museum, and yet if you’ve given your tour book [...]