The Language I Learned From Cassettes by Ben Ratliff This remembrance of the golden days when cassette tapes were invaluable strikes strikes right at a nostalgic vein that I find irresistible. Ben Ratliff deploys well-chosen details to capture the bygone … Continue reading Outside Reading — The Revolution Will Be Recorded edition
BEDTIME SONGS by Kiese Laymon Published in Oxford American, this essay by Kiese Laymon is lovely and moving in its purity. She writes evocatively about the experience of driving at night — with no particular geographic destination, just circling through … Continue reading Outside Reading — Right Track, Wrong Track edition
Meet the people fighting for health care access for disabled kids detained at the border by s.e. smith The grotesque immorality and abject cruelty currently being perpetrated against human beings attempting to immigrate into the U.S. — most of them … Continue reading Outside Reading — Life, Liberty, Etc. edition
An Oral History of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Perfect Men in Black ‘Sugar Water’ Scene by Rachel Handler Look, it’s probably a stretch to call this article an oral history, since it’s really comprised of nothing more than two interviews — with … Continue reading Outside Reading — I Want a Little Sugar in My Cup edition
The Unexpected Profundity of Curious George by Rivka Galchen I’m always going to susceptible to a smart story involving Curious George, and this piece is smarter than most. For The New Yorker, Rivka Galchen explores how well the adventures about … Continue reading Outside Reading — Ever So Curious edition
Don’t Let Nationalists Speak for the Nation by Jill Lepore This piece showed up in the Sunday edition of The New York Times, and it perfectly expresses one of the most painfully fraught dilemmas of the current political moment … Continue reading Outside Reading — It’s Not TV edition
I haven’t been watching the vital Congressional testimony taking place today, but I have been following it, largely through the lens of social media and online news sources. Particularly when considering the courage it took for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford … Continue reading Programming Note
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. If the flaming disaster … Continue reading Laughing Matters — Funny or Die, “Non-Voters Anonymous”
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. This has been a tough day for me and for anyone who has a political outlook roughly … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — “The Courage to Change”
With the occasional exception, I haven’t used this space to promote an ongoing charitable effort my household has undertaken since the most recent U.S. Presidential election. This month, however, I want to put these words wherever I can. The following … Continue reading STRATEGIC ACTS DONATION — OCTOBER 2017
Coffee for Two 