You Say Poh-tab-lah
The other day I was in a city-owned building downtown: one of those 1960's cement block uglies whose sole architectural emphasis seems to have been functionality, specifically, How to ensure that the people working inside this building feel like they're nothing more...
Silly silly people
Sometimes people are silly. That's a very gentle way of acknowledging that when one works in a service industry it's easy to grow exhausted by others' behaviors. Over-working oneself in such an industry only magnifies the situation exponentially. As can be...
Pullman on Libraries
I understand that since this is my space to write in, it should follow that I am the one doing the writing. But I've been tired of late, and instead of my words today I'd like to share someone else's. Below is a PDF of a speech recently given by the British author...
Cookie Fortune
Generally speaking, I'm wary of fortune cookies—those bulbous, crescent-shaped tan sugar cookies that often accompany the bill in Chinese restaurants and whose insides purportedly contain glad tidings. My distaste is because often the promised "fortunes" turn out to...
Hmmh???, Part II: A Uh, Clarification…
Earlier this week I wrote about Seraphim, a Greek Orthodox Bishop who made the news recently for blaming - amongst other things - Jewish bankers for the Holocaust. Surprisingly enough Seraphim's comments caused a bit of stir in Greece and abroad, and so several days...
Hmmh???
I like folks who believe strongly in conspiracy theories. I'm not inherently bent towards such thoughts, but whenever I come across them - the stream of myths surrounding the Knights Templar, the never-ending debate about the JFK assassination, NASA on the moon, the...
Crazy, and I’m sorry Joe
One month ago my neighbor Joe was murdered fifty feet up the street from my apartment. Joe lived two houses away. He was 58-years old. Joe liked to smoke cigarettes as he leaned against the fence in the back alley. He had two dogs, Rusty and Jake. Joe had a...
Sesquicentennial
One of the first big polysyllabic words I remember learning as a kid was Sesquicentennial. The word refers to a time period of 150-years (sesqui = one-and-a-half + cetennial = 100). I learned this word when the small town in Michigan where I grew up had its very...
Gay Enough?
Today, Congress finally repealed the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy that had been governing military procedures vis-a-vis homosexuality since 1993. Upon passage of the resolution, Senate leaders called the requisite press conference and began the even-more-requisite...
Sweep the Leg
Imagine you're a young woman attending an R&B concert by Usher. For the song "Trading Places," one of your favorites, Usher calls - of all the thousands of people at that evening's show - you, yes you, from the audience to sit onstage with him as he sings the...
Finished
After several weeks of slogging I finally finished Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon earlier today. 'Slogging' makes it sound like I didn't enjoy myself when I did greatly - large portions of the book were astoundingly beautiful, but at no point during the entire...