A week ago I wrote about the most effective and illuminating hoax I ever pulled on my students. Here’s what we learned from it . . . In a recent post I described a proposal concerning access to my services that I proposed to my students during a recent course. A Modest Proposal We were studying Michael Sandel’s What Money Can’t Buy, an exploration of how in our contemporary world market economies are generating market societies, societies in which ideas... Read more
I remember clearly the morning several years ago when a colleague from the English department, one of my teaching partners in a team-taught interdisciplinary course that semester, revealed to our sophomore students that he had just entered the twenty-first century. He had purchased his first I-pod. The students cheered enthusiastically, more or less in the same manner that I imagine our cave-dwelling ancestors might have cheered a person who figured out how to use fire several years after everyone else... Read more
Classes begin at the end of August, and I’ll be back in the classroom for the first time in fifteen months. As I plan my courses, one important question is when I will hold office hours. Which reminds me of one of the most effective and thought-provoking hoaxes I have ever pulled on my students . . . In 1729, Jonathan Swift of Gulliver’s Travels fame anonymously published a short work entitled A Modest Proposal, one of the great works... Read more
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. Winston Churchill I had a fascinating conversation on Facebook the other day (imagine that!). You may have noticed that we are in the middle of a very polarized political campaign—a Facebook acquaintance posted some data identifying the demographic that is most favorable to Donald Trump and most problematic for Hillary Clinton—white men with no degree. At the time the article was published, Hillary was doing 14% worse with... Read more
It has been hot this week—low to mid-nineties with high humidity. I know, for those of you living in Memphis or other summer furnaces, that sounds like a lovely spring day. But for those of us in New England, it’s hot. One of my favorite things to do in the summer—early in the morning before it’s too hot—is to sit on our front steps with coffee, be as still as possible, and watch the birds devour their daily allotment of bird suet... Read more
It has been a rough ten days at our house. Not because Jeanne had knee replacement surgery a week ago Tuesday and has been rehabbing, first in the hospital then in a short-term facility, until returning home yesterday afternoon. Not because I have been worried about her, about the piles of grading that never seem to get any smaller, and about overcoming my visceral dislike of health-care facilities as I visit her every day. No, it’s been a rough ten... Read more
Last week at the Republican National Convention, the Republicans nominated as their candidate for President of the United States a person so outside the norm, so iconoclastic in every way, that even the most experienced observers of American politics—insiders and outsiders alike—are scratching their heads. How did this happen? I suspect that it will take years for answers to fully develop, but there is one contributing factor that I have been hearing both through traditional and social media on a... Read more
A mystic is anyone who has the gnawing suspicion that the apparent discord, brokenness, contradictions, and discontinuities that assault us every day might conceal a hidden unity. Lawrence Kushner A while ago Jeanne and I were in the car listening to the hourly news update on NPR. As usual, they were trying to stuff as much horrible news as possible into a three-minute segment. Ebola, ISIS, Zika, Palestinians, Israel, Istanbul, Russia, illegal immigrants, racial discrimination— one of us said “they’re never... Read more
After the most beautiful Rhode Island June–sunny and low eighties day after day–in my twenty-two years in RI, July is feeling more like a traditional southern New England summer. High eighties or low nineties and noticeable humidity, pushing me out the door early in the morning for my daily bike ride in order to avoid dropping five pounds of sweat. As I ride my bike, various random thoughts weave in and out of my brain. The next time somebody tells... Read more
Twenty-eight years ago today my father said a few words over a beautiful redhead and me. Celebrate with us! In her recent book Small Victories, Anne Lamott includes a hilarious chapter describing her year as an early sixty-something on Match.com. Four years after her last serious relationship ended, she decided to go high-tech and find some dates on-line. If she had asked me, I would have advised against it. I know a handful of people who have gone the Internet dating... Read more
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