Having taught English a number of years, I suppose I’m expected to be a little stuffy about language, and I confess I am. So I have to remind myself constantly that language changes almost at the speed of light. The editor of Harper’s could use a little reminding, too. In a recent

When I was in my senior year of high school, I was looking for a summer job, hoping to put away a little money for college. I’d worked the previous summer in a hospital kitchen, preparing food trays for patients. This time, I wanted something more glamorous, something that didn’t

A couple of weeks ago, March 29, to be exact, I wrote about citizen libraries, little facilities no bigger than a bread box where one can leave or take a book to read, courtesy of a neighbor. The blue box in my area got run down the other day, but someone set it up again and though it

What I learned while serving in public office is that no system is more unjust than the criminal justice system. One of the most neglected classes of people on the planet aren’t those living impoverished lives in third world countries, but men coming out of prison after having compl

A friend looked a little shocked the other day when I told him I didn’t read the local newspaper and never watched the local news. He asked how I managed to stay informed. I replied that the best way to become uninformed was to rely on local media. Local news has shrunk to covering

I don’t read much science fiction anymore and I don’t know why. I devoured the genre when I was young and, fortunately, with guidance from a librarian, managed to read most of the classics. Science fiction can show us the full possibilities of the good, the bad and the ugly in our

I ran across an amusing definition of a tax haven the other day:  We won’t steal your money, but we won’t make a fuss if you steal other people’s. (“A Tale of Two Londons” by Nicholas Shaxson, Vanity Fair, 4/13, pg. 105) The quote made me think about the degree to which peo

During his bid for the presidency, Mitt Romney visited the mansion of John Schnatter, owner of Papa John’s International and used the opportunity to draw a comparison between Democrats and Republican. You know if a Democrat were here, he’d look round and say no one should live lik

My blog of March 5, 2013 “Thoughts on the Tenth Anniversary of the Iraq War,” drew a response from someone who had worked on Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s policy staff at the time of 9/11. Currently the writer teaches a course at Oberlin College on historical and cultural factors

How large should government be? That’s the question Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School, asks as he lays out the traditional Republican argument for why he thinks the country is in economic free fall. Predictably, as a Republican who served in George W. Bush’s administ