We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Elie Wiesel This statement is rallying, challenging, and perfect. It’s part of Wiesel’s 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, in which…
I’ve gotten a few reminders lately reminding me to “not take things so personally.” Grrr. Rarely do I respond positively to this suggestion, whether someone says it to me or even when it’s something that I’m trying to remind myself.…
Sometimes (I mean often) I’m a geek for etymology. If I get a word stuck in my head, which happens frequently, the way I start gnawing on it from every angle, mining it for every meaning, is almost compulsive. This…
I don’t know where I heard this metaphor about grief — that it’s like a ball in a box with a button inside. When loss is fresh and raw, it’s as if the ball and box are nearly the same…
I was reminded recently of Aristotle’s assertion that to extend trust is more valuable than to be trustworthy. I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit, because I find it so darned provocative. It was an especially unexpected and interesting…
"A man walks down the street, says 'Why am I soft in the middle now? Why am I soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?'" PAUL SIMON Paul Simon wrote this song during or…
I can’t tell if this is an interesting etymological revelation, or if it’s something that everyone else has always already known, and I’ve been slow to notice. At any rate, it’s taken me fifty years to think about the fact…
I’m not coming up with my usual smart answers. I’ve been racking my noggin’ to craft a clever and pithy framing for it all. I’ve scoured shelvesful of poetry and mysticism. I spent half a morning opening various spiritual books…
I was utterly charmed by the way English was spoken in London — the particular words and phrases we’d hear every day, the “Britishisms.” Sometimes I’m sort of a sponge with my environment, so I had to watch out for…
There was a video on social media a few weeks ago in which a high-school student filmed her classmates and teachers, stopping them in the hallways and classrooms and cafeteria, telling them: “I am working on a project about things…