To encourage more effectively a life-long habit of pleasurable reading, many public and private elementary schools and even some middle schools in New York are now starting “reading workshops” which abandon the traditional teaching of previously-required texts like To Kill a Mockingbird or Huckleberry Finn, encouraging children instead to bring in books of their own choosing to read.…
A feminist friend writes me the following about the enigmatic cover of the August 31 issue of The New Yorker: “We see, from the back, a white-haired man carrying a slender girl into the water, toward the moon, from a beach marked with a No Trespassing sign. Could this be a reference to Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo…
I’m directing a concert reading of THE DESIGNATED MOURNER, a dramatic discourse by Wallace Shawn, for English Alternative Theatre at the University of Kansas on Labor Day, so I’ve been thinking lately about why Shawn, who is such a fine and accomplished thinking-man’s playwright, is mostly known only for his work in the movies and…
A 26-year-old woman who was posing in the nude for a photographer at the Metropolitan Museum in New York has been arrested for “lewdness.” It’s clear she was no Venus de Milo. Both of her arms were intact.
They say the Senator is dead. Republicans will probably refrain from dancing in the streets, but watch them all weep crocodile tears as the lion continues to roar for health care reform, even in death. He may have passed. Now let’s hope what he fought for his whole life will finally come to pass.
My family has known it for, like, forever, but most Americans are now just discovering that it’s a lot cheaper to go overseas for their medical procedures. Insurance companies are calling it “medical tourism.” According to the Deloitte Center for Health Solution, 1.6 million Americans are expected to embark on trips for overseas health care in 2010, which more than…
So, what words do “hip” people use these days to say that something is “cool” or “uncool?” According to today’s Sunday New York Times, it’s “so (not) Obama” anymore to say that someone or something is “so Obama,” and I’ve never even heard the expression until I read the article. Just sayin,’ just sayin.’
Writing newspaper headlines is an art. Witness the front page story in yesterday’s Lawrence Journal-World about Bernadette Gray-LIttle, the exciting new chancellor at the University of Kansas. The headline? Gray-Little stresses worth of pursuing education. Hmmmm. Was this ever in doubt? So what’s the subtext here?
Faculty members at the University of Kansas who are fortunate enough to get a Kemper Teaching Fellowship (it comes with a $5000 cash award) are asked to each give a two-minute speech about their “teaching philosophy” at a convivial convention made even more convivial by the sumptious reception which follows the brief ceremony, at which event…
Although I’m calling this new website “a personal memoir in flux,” it is also my hope that the various sections will be of interest to people, whether they know me or not. “Out on a Lim” shares short observations on day-to-day life. “Limerances” chronicles longer remembrances of things past. “Limoscenes” presents descriptions of the plays…