When Greg Smith resigned from his position as an executive director in the London office of Goldman Sachs on Wednesday, most people didn’t know who he was. He was a midlevel investment banker at one of the largest investment banks in the world, with more than 30,000 employees. Apparently, in the I-banking world, “executive directors” [...]
Oranges and lemons, Say the bells of St. Clement’s You owe me five farthings, Say the bells of St. Martin’s When will you pay me? Say the bells of Old Bailey. When I grow rich, Say the bells of Shoreditch. When will that be? Say the bells of Stepney I do not know, Says the [...]
I should have seen it coming – every time I fly from Zanzibar to the United States, a wild range of cravings start roaming my mind and body, eventually holding me hostage with desire. Thoughts of various kinds of cheese keep me up at night. I spend my afternoons on Google researching varieties of maple [...]
The gallery is small but not the crowd for the “Private View” of exhibition Dandy in the Underworld: Portraits of Adam Ant. He really was beautiful. Chrissie Hynde is here! Walking around as if she were a mere mortal. And there are rows of mohawks, as the punks have come out too. Companion tells me [...]
First in a series of Worship Reviews I usually win on the horses. I have an instinct. But I should have known better than to follow the “hot tip” I received at church that morning. My horse came in third. Turf Paradise Race Track on a warm Arizona afternoon is the place to be. But [...]
If it can be digitized, it will. And once it’s digitized, what good are copies? Look at Google Books, which has already scanned some 15 million books and intends to digitize every volume in the world by the end of the decade — 130 million unique texts. Once a book’s on Google, you can chuck [...]
I am a high school English teacher. I have missed over a week of school due to jury duty at the DC Superior Court. What follows is an open letter to my ninth-grade world literature students. Dear students, I have missed you. While you have begun to consider issues of crime and punishment, and those of fate [...]
Something strange is happening to me. When I read books now, I find myself getting annoyed with them about halfway through. This is an entirely unscientific observation, anecdotal at best, and sporadic in actual occurrences. But it’s happened a few notable times in the past year, and I’ve come to a conclusion that seems to [...]
When I was in high school, the only two writing teachers I had were guys who taught so they could coach sports. Nothing against athletics, but these guys were dimwits. Their hearts were clearly in the gymnasium, not the classroom or at an austere table someplace with a small desk lamp, polishing prose and contemplating [...]
As a young woman, the great social reformer Jane Addams despaired over having too much academic learning, instead of real-world experience. She saw a clear dichotomy between the abstract world of books and contemplation, and the often gritty lives of real people in the everyday world. Prior to founding Hull-House, the pioneering social reform project [...]
When is the last time you remembered a dream? Saw images in your mind as palpable points of light, saw roadmaps and systems, heard the word of god? I barely remember my dreams let alone follow any distinguishable directions given by friends, presidents, or gods there within. I find it nearly impossible to remember my [...]
Much of education is aesthetic: The architecture, the “look” of the student body, the general vibe of a university. Such considerations may be superficial, but they aren’t trite. The feel of a school has a huge influence on one’s experience of it. There’s something about strolling through a centuries-old campus that compels you to excellence. [...]
When I moved back to Kentucky I gave up the city life, moving six hours away from Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood and my local Starbucks to a land of green pastures, black barns, and large homes nestled against picturesque rolling hills. Gone is my tiny apartment that was not unlike Sandra Cisneros’s own small cramped place [...]
I want to slow things down. I was planning on writing a post on several stories in Alan Heathcock‘s debut collection, Volt, but I think I’ll just look at the first story. “The Staying Freight”–I love the title–was first published in the Harvard Review. At 36 pages, it’s a long story. And it’s divided into [...]