Posts Tagged ‘America’
Party in the USA
July 18, 2018
The day is hot and musty but everyone is celebrating. After all, everyone can enjoy a small town fireworks display, right? I used to think so. But in revelatory moments, the sheen of this small town—with its beautiful park and festivities—is pulled back to reveal what was always present. Life isn’t always so bright for…
Read MoreRace Relations: A Personal History
January 15, 2018
It is Martin Luther King Day, and I muse about how my relation to African-Americans has been shaped over the years. When I was a child, my father would sometimes take me into work with him on Saturdays. He was a physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where he ran a research lab (with…
Read MoreI Am an American
March 2, 2017
I refresh the page, I refresh the page, I turn away for a few minutes, I teach a class for seventy-five minutes, I sit in a meeting for sixty minutes, and on the way to the meeting, on the way back to my office from the class, with my iPhone in my palm, at the…
Read MoreMy September 11 Story, and Ours, Part II
September 13, 2016
For Scott Simon, and for Bill Craven Continued from yesterday. In the back of my closet, inside a cellophane folder where I keep the rarest papers I own, there is a plain piece of unremarkable 8 ½ by 11 printer paper. At the top of the paper is the inscrutable coding “TC2001091307CD22AM.” Just to look…
Read MoreMy September 11, and Ours: Part I
September 12, 2016
We knew in an instant everything about our lives had changed, but we did not know how much, or that everything would be different from what we had thought.
Read MoreCanada: Detroit’s Southerly Neighbor
May 3, 2016
Detroit is the only major city in America, people will tell you (even if you haven’t asked), where you drive south to get to Canada. The southerly orientation of our otherwise-northern neighbor is due to an odd strip of Canada that squeezes in between Lake Huron and Lake Erie. That strip extends all the way…
Read MoreTaming the Busy Trap
August 14, 2015
My wedding and a move from Michigan to Wyoming have filled my summer with enough checklists and tasks to keep me running around until one in the morning, until I finally put myself to bed, the set of tomorrow’s tasks stuttering in my ear while I try to sleep.
Read MoreHow to Talk to the Dying
August 22, 2014
Since being diagnosed nearly seven years ago with a lethal cancer, I have backed my old friends and new acquaintances into a quandary. What do you say to a dying man? Strangers don’t seem to have any difficulty. Now that chemotherapy has reduced me to a tattered coat upon a stick, I am routinely praised,…
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