There are a lot of reasons to quit this job. Kate did. I don’t blame her. But of all the reasons to quit this job, the three best are depression, humiliation and rage. A freshman turns in the homework. I look at his t-shirt, and see a disarming photo of a nice looking young man. …
I’ve lived most of my life, particularly my writing life which is a significant amount of time each day even on weekends and yes, holidays, too, in what I call the open wound. I don’t think I am alone in this, but believe the poetic disposition is particularly tuned into wounds. Some may have been …
J. D. Salinger died on the 27th of January. He is best known as the author of one of the most critically acclaimed novels of the twentieth century, The Catcher In The Rye. A contributor to such magazines as The New Yorker, Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post, he made many notable contributions to literature, …
Sweet brother, if I do not sleepMy eyes are flowers for your tomb So Merton wrote in “For My Brother: Reported Missing in Action, 1943.” Merton’s brother John Paul was killed after his plane crashed in the North Sea during a bombing mission. He was pulled from the water into a rubber dinghy but died …
Concerning public schools, we know all we need to know about educational reform. So what do teachers, principals and administrators know about reforming the public schools? Where do we begin? Four points. We need order in our schools. We need teachers to be empowered. We know that instruction should be individualized. We know that we …
Most people over the age of 50 nowadays have an attitude toward technology similar to mine, I think. I use technology everyday. I depend on it to do my job, practice my art, and maintain my social contacts, but I’m leery of it. It seems to fail when I most depend on it, and I …
I am a Roman Catholic. I was not surprised last month when I read of yet another pedophile priest. Nor was I surprised by the cover-up. But I was shocked to hear that two boys, ten and fourteen, were administered a solemn oath, on peril of their immortal souls, not to reveal that they were …
We’ve all been riveted by survival stories—those who survive shipwrecks, live on berries in the woods, withstand Artic cold for days on end. In this way we learn that the human capacity to survive extreme circumstances is quite large. Some, perhaps many, have gone on Outward Bound journeys, been solo, recorded the rigors in journals …