HOW THINGS LOOK FROM DOWN HERE: One View From Among the Peons, Peasants, Plebeians, and Hoi Polloi
Writing in the aftermath of the French Revolution, the Savoyard political philosopher Joseph de Maistre — a disdainer of democracy — famously observed that “every nation has the government it deserves.” Whether he was right […]
Read the essay →Today is tax day. Last week, I made the now-familiar drive to see my guy — no longer three blocks away, but out in Annandale, Virginia, thirteen miles from midtown DC. I took Little River […]
Read essay →In a conversation with a friend, he told me he’d been doing a bit of research about ways AI could assist him. Telling me about his newfound interest sparked one of my own. Mine led […]
Read essay →Poetry, for me, used to be nothing more than a thought, feeling, or opinion expressed in rhyme, which explains my being (mostly) bad at it. In searching through old, yellowed papers for a long-misplaced poem […]
Read essay →Humans are adept at surviving life’s tragic truths. We don’t let certain realities occupy our moment-to-moment or day-to-day thoughts and activities lest they become our only reality. So, some of us shop for groceries thinking […]
Read essay →So racially segregated are our lives that we tend to give it no thought. Covid-19 probably has contributed to this pronounced state, re-emphasizing the tenuousness of our diversity. The assault on the Capitol made me […]
Read essay →(As last month was Black History Month, and this month is Women’s History Month, I thought I’d do the two-birds, one-stone thing and offer a few reflections on four Black women who come to mind). […]
Read essay →When I was a ten-year-old, in 1962, I determined when I would know the future had arrived, a determination made while watching the animated television sitcom, The Jetsons. When that show’s characters spoke on the […]
Read essay →I don’t know the identity of the wag, curmudgeon, or comedian who thought to compare opinions with a certain orifice, but I suspect she or he did so in response to being either amused or […]
Read essay →(Students in a writing class were introduced recently to writer Stephen Dixon’s short-short story, “Wife in Reverse,” and tasked with writing something that mirrored its style, substituting the word “Wife” in the title with “Life.” […]
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