I went to the polls in search of a metaphor, because I am desperate for something, and some days that something is for someone to decide my ideas and words are worth broadcasting, and clearly a central metaphor would help with that. Some spectacular link of the personal and the…

I didn’t sleep at all last night, a semi-voluntary exile from the painful, life-giving routine of settling the mind enough to rest. I tried once, around four, and was so shaken by the incipient shape of panic looming over me, the fear of which had kept me from the mattress…

At the risk (certainty) of sounding grandiose, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the world in 2019 feels subjectively more unstable to most Americans than, say, 2014, or 1956. The President is a racist, the President is a lunatic, the President…is the President. The world…

This week has brought us a new year, and with it arrives a new Congress, complete with a different Speaker of the House. In the weeks preceding his departure from the role, Paul Ryan has been wrongly lauded and rightly pilloried for a legacy that consists largely of lying about…

October 10, 2018 The half life of this endless summer is enough to inspire me to an almost violent rage. People often speak of the soporific effects of the heat (perhaps I should use ‘writes’; no one says ‘soporific’ out loud), but rarely do they mention its capacity to melt…

The past week has served as a painful reminder that even the inevitable can come as a crushing surprise. In the days following the Santa Fe shooting, I dwelt on it, as I’m sure we all did. When we see people gunned down, in a school of all places, there’s…

Opening day hits differently every year. Its taken me by surprise one year and capped off months of fervid anticipation the next; I’ve witnessed it from the ballpark and across the Atlantic. Always the felling is the same, however; the oft-cited hope and optimism brought about by 0–0 in the…

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” - Atticus Finch, in Harper…

No holiday has easier obligations for a child than Thanksgiving. Christmas and birthdays demand you buy presents; New Years compels you stay up till midnight and swipe a sip of Champagne while no one is looking; the Fourth finds you sequestered away from the low grade explosives that make the…