• Music - Politics/Culture

    Brilliant Songs #24: Henryk Górecki’s “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”

    August 28, 2021 - By 

    As our 20-year nation-building project draws to a catastrophic close in Afghanistan, what do we have to show for it? It’s a painful question made all the more so by the lives of U.S. soldiers and civilians freshly lost in the terrible bombings on Thursday, not to mention the far greater number of Afghans who have paid, and will continue to do so long after our exit, with their lives and freedom for the brief window of semi-democracy both nations worked with such tenacity and treasure to provide for that beleaguered land. All of it turning now, with near dizzying…

  • Politics/Culture

    The Global Retreat From Democracy

    August 22, 2021 - By 

    It was called, among other things, “the end of history,” which was to say, the ultimate triumph of the western liberal, market-based democratic ideal around the globe. The Berlin Wall had fallen in 1989 and communist control of Eastern Europe soon collapsed. The Soviet Union almost simultaneously embarked on a monumental breakup and independence for its constituent republics, soon holding its own democratic elections featuring a peaceful (and astounding) transfer of power in 1991. Like a benevolent tsunami gathering up everything in its path, a loudly proclaimed optimism for a new world order made government watchers and freedom lovers (and capitalists) around…

  • Personal Reflections

    The Turning Point on the (Hopefully) Long Journey Home

    August 14, 2021 - By 

    You reach a point in life—I’m not sure when it began but I know it has—that your people—friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, teachers, teammates— who have died begin to rival in number, and feel as present to you, as those who are still living. This represents some kind of turning point no one ever alluded to in my formative years, when they suggested all the exciting things awaiting me in my maturity. No one ever took me aside back then in a candid moment and intoned, “All they’re saying is true, but at a certain point, you will also begin to…

  • Personal Reflections

    The Day Bernie Flew Over His Chair

    August 7, 2021 - By 

    I was eight years old and skinny and new to the school, and my parents spoke with thick accents. Bernie combed his hair straight back and often tilted on the back legs of his chair, a pencil stuck idly in his mouth, and there were several girls who walked by his desk a lot. Bernie offered me his friendship not so much by anything he said, but just by following me out the door to recess a couple of times and lining up next to me for milk. We became partners in foursquare. In the spring of that year we…

  • Odds & Ends - Personal Reflections

    On Simone Biles and the Triumph of Women

    August 1, 2021 - By 

    Let’s face it, guys: the women have won. And though it was a long time coming, their victory was inevitable. They just had to push long enough, through a protracted labor, and wait us guys out, allowing our emotional deficits enough time to send us crashing into walls, dazed and confused and shouting ourselves hoarse all the way. And as it turns out, their victory is ours too, though it has been a grudging one, and we have not yielded all that gently (who does, about what?). And there is still a long way to go. But that is to…