“We are a storytelling species, every bit as much as a tool-using one,” writes the author of The English Professor Who Foresaw Modern Neuroscience. I agree. As a teacher, I would tell my students, “If you want to see how your mind works, write something.” Composition exp
“We make lists because we don’t want to die.” So says, Umberto Eco, medievalist, philosopher, and author of Foucault’s Pendulum. With lists, we attempt to manage time, knowing time is a nonrenewable resource. A list fixes a task to memory and gives us the psychological satis
Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted he was stunned to see people of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) applaud when they learned Tennessee had halted all vaccinations for minors, including those for Covid-19. The state said it wanted to protect parents’ rights to make medic
Most societies link human childbirth to the spiritual. “It’s a miracle,” a new parent is likely to gasp upon seeing his or her offspring for the first time. That sense of the divine is not lost in patriarchal societies. To downplay the woman’s role, religious myths credit th
When I entered the second grade, my life fell apart. World War 11 was raging. My mother divorced my father and became a single parent–an immigrant with a modest command of English and no job skills. My father, angry, left us to fend for ourselves and that meant my mother
A man in his 50s admitted on Facebook he was depressed about the changes he saw barreling down on society like a runaway train. He doubted the alterations were for the better. As he is a liberal thinker, I supposed he was suffering from Trump fatigue and wondering, as I do, when our
A large book agency has asked to see the first 50 pages of my memoir, “Getting Lost to Find Home.” I’m not turning cartwheels. Most agents ask for sample pages as part of the query. This one required a query before deciding to see more. Call it a baby step forward. A req
Recently, a friend sent me a quote ascribed to the American anthropologist, Margaret Mead. It was her answer to a question that asked what constituted the first signs of civilization in a culture. She said it would be a broken thighbone that had healed properly. In the wild, the dis
During the second impeachment hearing for Donald Trump, a woman with a sense of irony shared this line from George Orwell’s novel, 1984 on her Facebook page. The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. The quote garn
In Costa Rica, or Panama or Honduras, wherever they’d migrated, when the piggy bank was empty, my maternal grandmother worked shifts in a local brothel to put food on the table. She wasn’t a regular sex worker but rented rooms by the hour. If she couldn’t afford the fee, she