Speaking of technology, and these days who isn’t, how can any regular person deal with the biggest contradiction in retail (though not as big as between what they charge and what’s in my account). From not only the advertisements but consumer journalism, your living room is supposed to have flat-screen LCD plasma four-wheel-projection HD televisions […]
Fishing around for a headline to this, I remembered the above. It’s the outcue for the audio column on NPR’s Morning Edition that the late poet John Ciardi used to do in the early to mid-1980s. He considered origins, histories and roots of words in them. Posthumously, in 1987, Harper published a book of his, […]
The reportage dichotomy keeps coming up. Who’s in charge: the people in the article or the people creating the article? How about a few terse examples, with questions we can consider over lunch. As noted yesterday, a school stopped what it called a gang initiation. In it local officials again say real gangs — just […]
Several Bentonville [Ark.] High School students were suspended last week after being caught on camera in what school officials believe was a gang initiation, according to Bentonville Superintendent Gary Compton. Compton described the incidents as a possible ‘gang jump-in’ that took place Jan. 22 and 23 at the high school. ‘We believe it was a […]
Copyright 2007 Ben S. Pollock One should know one’s surroundings well, or try to. In most of the U.S., where owning your house is expected, renting causes a different appreciation for the place (so I can’t speak for a place like Manhattan). Even if you’ve fully unpacked in a rental, the feeling of unsettledness always […]
The recently late Art Buchwald said something to the effect of that writing political humor meant he never ran out of ideas, he had five or six every morning (when I find that quote I’ll revise this). The even-more recently late Molly Ivins said something like she thanked the good Lord for giving her infinite […]