September 20, 2016
Stevie Smith
For the past several days, I’ve been lugging around Stevie Smith’s All the Poems, which came out earlier this year from New Directions. Edited by Will May, it runs 806 […]
September 1, 2016
Placement Test
A few days ago, at breakfast with friends, someone brought up the name of an Ypsilanti coffee shop I hadn’t thought about in a while. Oh, I thought, I wrote […]
August 26, 2016
Fall Forward
In my 190-plus posts for this blog, I’ve only once thought to sing the praises of A.Word.A.Day, Anu Garg’s brilliant daily email blast. Allow me a second huzzah: A.Word.A.Day is, […]
August 13, 2016
There Ought to Be Clowns
I sort of swore off writing about clowns earlier this summer, but I’ve continued to hear their shuffling feet and their muffled laughs. A couple of weeks ago, former Texas […]
July 26, 2016
Libraries, Little and Free (Part Two)
In my previous post, I wrote about my affection for Little Free Libraries. Because I see so many of them in my neighborhood, and because I pause in front of […]
July 22, 2016
Libraries, Little and Free (Part One)
I live in a town, Ann Arbor, that values reading. We have a handful of lovely bookstores; we have several handfuls of excellent university and public libraries. We also have […]
July 9, 2016
Trump Card
I’m writing this post on a Wednesday morning, after having just read a spirited debate over the meaning of the Brexit vote in The New York Times. All five of […]
July 7, 2016
The Kangas of the World
My five-year-old daughter and I have been reading Winnie-the-Pooh this week. In the seventh chapter, the nativist Rabbit tries to drive out recent arrivals Kanga and Roo by kidnapping Roo […]
July 1, 2016
Get Back
I injured my back in mid-April—and my recovery, or lack of recovery, has been, at times, painful and demoralizing. So I’ve spent much of the past two months on my […]
June 26, 2016
Clowns: The Week in Review
I’m a fan of short forms: the clerihew, the cartoon caption, the political tweet. As such, I enjoy reading the rating summaries that appear at the end of New York Times movie reviews. […]
May 31, 2016
Closer Yet He Approaches Us
I’ve made it a habit, from time to time on this blog, to note Whitman’s birthday. The day has come round again; the great gray celebrant is 197 years old. […]
May 23, 2016
Forget I Said It
According to a recent essay in the New York Times, Americans feel pretty awful on Mondays. Google searches for “depression” and “anxiety” are at their highest; searches for “jokes” are […]