Alas, a Blog
Brief writings, comments, updates and vignettes.
I don’t know where my old Muffs cassette is these days, but that band carved out a little space in my music-loving heart, and I was so sad to learn that their frontwoman, Kim Shattuck, has died way too young — age 56, of ALS. It’s not just their catchy little snarky/world-weary/get-over-it ditties. It’s the […]
Read MoreHere’s what I remember about President George Herbert Walker Bush, on the occasion of his passing. In 1990, on a meandering cross-country road trip, I drove out of Yosemite National Park to see an enormous column of smoke reaching into the sky, so titanic and towering I at first wasn’t able to make sense of […]
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Black Enterprise Magazine poses the question: “How many black male teachers did you have growing up?” (h/t Nettrice Gaskins for posting the article in her social feed.) In WASPy Caldwell/West Caldwell, N.J., the faces of ethnic diversity were Irish and Italian Catholics, Greeks (Orthodox, natch) and the occasional Jew. At James Caldwell High School, George […]
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I saw the oldest woman in the world yesterday getting on the bus. She wasn’t the stereotype of a “bag lady,” however. Not odoriferous, nor ranting, drooling, twitchy, etc. She was, rather, the embodiment and definition of age. She was a continent of wrinkles. She was like a fairy tale of an old woman. She […]
Read MoreNew Watershed Media post explores “the Future of Journalism” as a techno-industrial metaphor that perpetuates the crisis of journalism by deepening the funding drought for news production in neglected communities. Check it out: “The crisis of journalism as metaphor: Or, why not just pay more journalists?” Watershed Media Project, January 29, 2013
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