June 17th, 2022 | Education, Family, General, Politics, Popular Culture
What are these people getting worked up about? Film and Television in the 20th Century The ten “Madea” movies made since 2005 have earned buckets of money for Tyler Perry. Somebody has been watching them. For “The Nutty Profession” (1996), Eddie Murphy most of...
June 28th, 2021 | Education, Europe, Friends, General, Travel
I learned about the English-Speaking Union at Emma Willard School where, freshman year, our ESU was the tall and soignée Julia. Three years later, I applied to the program; our headmaster, William Dietel, at that time chaired the selection committee. I still remember...
March 18th, 2021 | Education, General, visual arts
A painter I know, Gary Horn, recently reminded me of a traditional issue. “I could never figure out the great divide between artists and historians,” he wrote. “…art education could be greatly improved by historians and artists discussing art...
October 16th, 2020 | Education, General, Politics, social media
“You know Bill Gates is trying to microchip all of us,” said the guy at the body shop when I was picking up my car. I honestly thought he was yanking my chain. We had just exchanged what I thought were joking words about information revealed by using my credit card. I...
January 23rd, 2019 | Education, General, Indigenous Peoples, Politics, Popular Culture, Society at Large
When I saw that video clip of Nick Sandmann smirking at Omaha Elder Nathan Phillips who was drumming and chanting, and realized just how close the two were standing, I was outraged at the boy’s insolence, shocked at the implicit insult of a white person to an...
January 7th, 2019 | Education, Europe, General, Memory, Travel, United States, visual arts
The painting on that wall in the Tisch Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art would not let me move on. Only a couple of years ago, My Dear One and I had wandered the maze of discontinuous hallways and Escher-like stairs that constitute today’s Louvre Museum to...