It's June 22nd.  Eighty years ago today, Nazi Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, inaugurating what would be--if it were considered its own conflict--among the...

My dad died twenty-five years ago next month, and so I have been without someone to wish a "happy Father's Day" to in person almost as long as I had someone to wish that to, which is a very strange...

I had breakfast at a diner this morning. Yes, that's right, you heard me: an actual diner.  Indoors.  Unmasked.  I mean, I wore a mask when I came in, but for the meal I took it off.  Everyone...

Oh this is sort of fun—a close reading of Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art.”  But it is a tepid analysis of a great poem, missing some obvious things.

First of all, let’s allow that it’s not a great...

I'm reading a piece on Robert Merton, the great sociologist of science (and so much more--his On the Shoulders of Giants is a tremendous book that anyone should read).  The piece is about his writing...

32 years ago today, an iconic image of our era was committed to posterity: 

I wonder if we have fully recognized how iconic, how representative, it would be.  Resistance--yes.  But futile...