Essays
1109 results
Page 70
How a teacher makes a difference
One teacher's well-placed words
When she caught me cheating, Miss Rosenthal could have humiliated me. But she found a better way to get the message across.
Essays
2 minute read
Memories of "The Welcomat'
We called it ‘the 'Mat'
For a brief moment in the '80s— when writers still used typewriters and people still read newspapers— the old weekly Welcomat wreaked havoc with conventional journalistic norms. For an even briefer moment, I enjoyed a front-row seat.
Searching for intelligent life at the shore
A mind is a terrible thing to waste, or: One week in July at the Jersey shore
You're down the shore, with six days to go. How many more miniature golf courses, mermaid key rings, seashell villages and jellyfish in your newspaper before your brain turns to applesauce?
Essays
5 minute read
Heart attack, Part 7: All the king's horses
The cake also rises: The long road back from heart surgery
If attitude were the determining factor, I told myself, no way would I need more surgery. But no matter how far I'd come, I thought, the world could undo me any moment.
Annals of medicine: The Gone-A-Gram
High-tech health care:
Between life and death at a modern hospital
Computerized guidelines for terminating life? Rhesus monkeys programmed to perform surgery? If only patients responded less emotionally and more rationally to the innovations of modern biotechnology, America's health care headaches would vanish overnight.
Essays
7 minute read
A homophobe in spite of himself?
Sunday in the park with Shaq, or: Getting in touch with my inner homophobe?
Went to a dance/ Lookin' for romance;/ Wound up with a giant dude/ A-sweatin' in his pants. But hey, it's San Francisco.
Essays
5 minute read
"Churchill and the Power of Words' in NY
He got the biggest thing right
Very few men are suddenly called to greatness. Winston Churchill was one of them, and, though virtually disarmed, he defied history's greatest tyrant with the first and last of all human weapons.
Essays
8 minute read
How green is my carbon footprint?
Save the planet? Why?
Excuse me, but isn't all this environmental correctness becoming a convenient marketing ploy?
Essays
3 minute read
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The Gospels: Fact or fiction?
The Gospel truth? That depends
What did Jesus really say on the cross? Are the Gospels fairy tales or journalism? How can you take them seriously when they contradict each other? A colloquy between two aficionados of Bach's St. John Passion.
Essays
6 minute read
Between fiction and self-deceit: A writer's fable
Come back, not-so-little Sheba, or: When writers finally grow up
When Literature becomes Life, watch out! What is life, after all, but a series of interlocking narratives?
Essays
4 minute read