When I was in 8th grade I wrote a thousand lines of poetry. All rhyming, all to try and impress a girl (she wasn’t). Most of it was pretty bad, but it helped me cultivate a sense of meter and an appreciation for the well-chosen word and line. I kept writing semi-regularly for a decade…
My grandfather passed away last week, at the age of 92. He had a strong Jewish education (Yeshiva Flatbush), led our family’s Passover seders when we visited, and appreciated the pulls of identity. He married an Irish Catholic before she converted to Judaism, and celebrated both the Irish and Jewish sides of his children’s heritage.…
I was recently asked to help out with a student-directed production of “The Nether” at Cornell. There aren’t any full-on “fights,” but the director recognized that they would benefit from assistance with a lift and some brief moments of physical aggression between the characters. The show is challenging, touching on themes of abuse and manipulation…
In thinking about how we can promote positive, healthy masculinity, if we don’t want to raise sons who think that all art/film/literature began in the 21st century it’s worth thinking about what classics exist that already promote positive (masculine) identity. Brit Marling’s recent critique of film tropes and Ross Douthat’s piece from last year in…
I have a confession to make: I use a flip-phone. Not sometimes, as a break from my smartphone, not as a statement of fashion, but every day, as my phone. I’m probably not the typical non-smartphone user: I’m 34 years old, I first got a Facebook account while in college (though I rarely use it)…
When I was in eighth grade, I (along with about seven other students) took Geometry (and at a local high school first thing in the morning, then bused back to our school, where we’d wait in a windowless room (and ostensibly do homework, though I remember one kid playing with a lighter, and us mostly…
If you’re like me, there are books that you enjoy having on your shelf because other people may think you’re smart/deep for having read them, and others that you don’t read in public (or hide the titles if you do) because they don’t fit with the image you try to project. Reformation by Diarmaid MacCulloch…
