Category Archives: Uncategorized

My brother Nick, who was hosting, decided we had to eat outdoors the same way the Pilgrims did–rather global-warming weather,  so that didn’t prove onerous–and we would have a mock-trial, presided over by my cousin Merle, about whether Michael Dukakis’ … Continue reading →

On a Berlin street in September 1952, she’s lofted to kinetic (and literary??) immortality by a choreographic genius as a sister great-ballerina watches with enthusiasm. All this on the cover of University Press of New England’s spring 2016 catalog.

“Bombing Doesn’t Kill an Ideology It Feeds it” So reads a sign held up by a young man photographed at a demonstration in London last week. Taken by Alisdare Hickson/flickr/cc, it’s reproduced at CommonDreams. It’s encouraging that the other faces … Continue reading →

But that’s just me. Charles McNamara, Phd student in Classics at Columbia, is writing his thesis on the history of certainty in antiquity and its afterlife in Early Modern Italy. And he’s also co-editing a volume on ambiguity in Latin … Continue reading →

my family invented it! Over the weekend, my mother pulled out some scrapbooks her mother had put together and there was a little family tree written by grandmother Anna Leroi Waterman–going back to our first forbears in the U.S.: John … Continue reading →

toward exposing the sewer discharge of Trump’s rhetoric. The New York Times’ editorial board cross checks Trump with McCarthy and Wallace. And now what we need is  a contrast and compare to Hitler and Stalin. As the Times writes, “History … Continue reading →

I will allow myself five minutes to feel glosserific! Turn to page 108 of the December Vanity Fair.

Always remember: it’s the people in this country who most stridently espouse hyper-patriotism who are the least democratic. Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept itemizes the number of neo-con boot-lickers whose total lack of detachment and objectivity haven’t earned them a … Continue reading →

I don’t mean bombs-bursting-in-air stuff. I mean, like when you’ve gotten to the bottom of all those small plastic grocery bags–the 125th Street Fairway has really solid ones–that you use as little garbage bags.

Is that what Democrats say when they meet someone really hot at a party? This speculation prompted by my starting Mark Hertsgaard’s important late-1980s book, “On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency,” which details twin disasters of the … Continue reading →