Free-for-All: The students arrive in Boston

The sidewalk in my Brookline neighborhood is a free-for-all – literally. The students are coming and more to the point, the students are going and leaving behind mountains of stuff: cat-shredded couches, chairs missing legs or seats, and a million giant garbage bags stuffed with the flotsam of student life: clothes, pillows, half empty jars…

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Can a middle aged white lady book a flight to Wakanda?

Can she feel the same kind of pride in Black Panther that she feels about sharing a genome with Olympic athletes? Black Panther won the gold, in every sense of the word. (Why was anyone surprised by the boffo box office?) Ryan Coogler and team used the standard ingredients of all super-hero movies — barroom brawl,…

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How I learned to stop grumbling and love the winter

Watching the Olympic athletes in Korea contend with punishing winds and dangerous slopes, I marveled. Those hardy souls who rejoice in snow and ice are a race apart. Most of us are waiting out the winter, wishing it were over, or fleeing if we can. In January, the walls start to close in and by…

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Florida: 17 dead … and counting

I wrote this piece a few weeks ago…. I guess I’ll just keep posting it when this happens again and again and again. In the aftermath of 17 dead in Florida, the reports seem to dwell on the fact that this is the MOST deaths in a high school shooting. Higher than Columbine! Like it’s…

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Power to the punchline: Samantha Bee and Robin Thede

This essay appeared previously on WBUR’s Cognoscenti with several great links. A few years back, the marquee late-night TV talk shows played a game of musical chairs, which ended with all five hosting seats taken, by a man, by men. HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” the latest entry in this elite club, also put a male member…

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A blogpost about the terrible, no good, very bad weather

Most of us grew up with Hurricanes named Mariah, Suzanne, Henrietta, and Inez. I don’t recall much of a kerfuffle in 1978 and 1979 when the weather service decided it was only fair to add men’s names to the mix, which meant that Hurricane Melissa has been followed by Hurricane Norman ever since. (Had the…

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Sister is Powerful vs. Sexual Misconduct

The daily dispatches about sexual harassment and abuse have unleashed a parade of celebrity perp walks, howls of denial, shame-faced confessions, moronic mewlings (“How am I supposed to know the line between flirting and harassment?”) and — we knew it was coming — “The War on Men!” Good people are shocked — shocked! — to…

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My new author photo

This was taken today, September 2, Labor Day weekend, 2017. I was asleep, when my friend, Ben Loeterman, took this photo. I NEVER take naps. Okay, I nap when I am sick in bed with fever and chills. But never on the beach. Until today. Perhaps this a breakthrough. Or maybe it was just the…

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