New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has just listed ten books which are on his summr rereading list because they’re “triumphs of fiction, both fun to read and significant for literary or historical reasons, relating to social justice at a time when inequality in America has soared to historic levels.” Here’s Kristof’s list of…
Thanks to The New Yorker article (30 August 2010) on the powerful billionaire Koch brothers of Wichita, and the continuing updates about them on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, we now know what Koch Industries is up to as it funds and manipulates the election of political candidates who would then support the Koch…
Mykee, my sweet and gentle keeshond, is 14 years old today. In the past six years, she has undergone major surgery and extensive chemo treatments twice, but you wouldn’t know it from her youthful demeanor and disposition. True, she is now somewhat deaf, but she has learned to read my lips and to go wherever…
What’s all the hew and cry over the alleged photo on Twitter of Rep. Anthony Wiener (D-NY) in his underwear? Didn’t we all grow up seeing equally “lurid” photos of Marky Mark and all the other beefy Calvin Klein models in humongous billboards all over Times Square and in glossy family magazine spreads? Republicans taking…
In an interview with The New York Times about his new book, “The Secret Knowledge,” David Mamet says, among other things, that it’s “none of our goddamned business” how much money C.E.O.’s on Wall Street make….that he might have been anticapitalistic when he was younger and didn’t have a penny, but he cannot “go on…
Republican Gov. Sam Brownback has now fired all five employees of the Kansas Arts Commission. I’m sure what money this saves the sorry State of Kansas can now be shifted to any further campaigns the artless governor might have against Planned Parenthood and Abortion. By all means, let’s have more unwanted kids in more crumbling…
On the afternoon of 9 May 2011, the English Department of the University of Kansas gave a festive “milestones celebration” in the North Gallery of the Spencer Research Library for three of its new retirees, presided by Chair Marta Caminero-Santangelo, and organized by Administrative Assistant Robert Elliott. The retirees (Mike Johnson, Jim Hartman and I)…
Growing up in the 1950s in the Philippines, I remember Good Fridays being especially sad and mournful, not because Jesus died a horrible death on the cross on this particular day, but because it was the only day of the year when most of the movie houses in Manila were sanctimoniously dark, and the few…
In a stimulating essay (“The Sex Drive, Idling in Neutral”) in today’s New York Times, Meg Wolitzer says she cannot imagine women like Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor or the former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice having sex. This led me to thoughts I shouldn’t have had, of other people of either gender whom I…
According to the Newark Star-Ledger, Jersey Shore’s “Snooki” got $32,000 last night for talking to a thousand undergraduates at Rutgers University about hair styling and “lessons for life,” while Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison will get only $30,000 to deliver the university’s commencement address in May. Snooki offered her audience the following…