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The Power of the Clown
How a "fairy-tale figure" defied the Nazis with gentle wit.
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Don Quixote at the Market
“His fancy grew full of…enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, agonies…no history in the world had more reality in it.” —Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote The downtown EV charger hunches between progress and regress, optimism and depression. Across the street is the renovated market building, elegant but
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My Mother's Angels
“A person always exceeds and resists the limits of a story about them...” —Catherine Lacey, Biography of X When the angels came to my mother, they were not, as might be expected, wielding flaming swords to avenge all wounds. Mostly, they were singing show tunes. In her last few years
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Pilgrim's Progress
A revisited offering on the Thanksgiving story.
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The Road to Clarity
Or, conducting a quest on a trickle charge.
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Far Out and Close In
Thoughts on the Overview Effect, the power of stories, and the value of a single life.
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Making and Unmaking a Golem
I’ve been making a golem. This screen is the lump of clay; now I’m trying to find the right words to breathe life into it. Last week I stumbled across a post on AI that got me thinking about golems again. Then I fell into Alice Hoffman’s
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The Weight of Civilization
Driving south with a carful of books.
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Rereading Charlotte's Web as Charlotte
Thoughts on International Women's Day
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The Sailmaker's Daughter
170 years ago, a teenage girl wrote about the contrast between fine weather and cruel times.
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Rivers, Seas, and Trees
On shaping and escaping the frame.
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Sheltering the Soul of the World
Reflections on Rosh Hashanah and a Holocaust Memoir