Monthly Archives: June 2011

There’s an App for That

I’m a middle-aged man, with the characteristics of a middle-aged man. I accept this. In summer, I grill and I tend to make a fetish of it. I make my own barbecue sauce. I make out that it’s some big artisan deal, when it’s really not. Probably another ego thing. I was out in the […]

500 Questions

I have a friend, approaching middle age, who suddenly found himself single last year after 15 years of marriage. Recently he decided it’s time to re-enter the singles scene and after some fruitless flailing, surrendered to the 21st century inevitability of the computer dating service. I find the whole thing fascinating, from a purely academic […]

A Few Crumbs

I was helping the teenager prepare for her English final last week, reviewing with her Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir “Night,” which she read this semester. (I’d never read the book, a gap in my own education.) I came across this passage: “Dozens of starving men fought each other to death for a few crumbs (thrown […]

Acting Like a Patriot

The tenth of July 1995 was the tenth anniversary of the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior by the French government. The RW had been protesting French nuclear testing in the South Pacific. Fernando Pereira was killed. In 1995, the French were again testing nukes in the Pacific and Greenpeace had been holding a protest vigil […]

Crazy Like a Fox

I admit having a morbid fascination with electoral politics, the way some people feel about slasher movies. Even so, the Sarah Palin bus tour is too gruesome and I must avert my eyes. Democrats are said to be happy with the antics of the former half-term governor of Alaska. The hype around Ms. Palin chokes […]