“Learn a new language and get a new soul.”
I have said and done many things of which I am not proud. That is, I am no golden bird cheeping about human frailties from some high branch of superhuman understanding.
That’s what happens whenever I hear the opening notes of Bruce Springsteen’s wonderful “My Hometown.”
Of course there’s irony here in that LinkedIn is asking writers — who, after all, make their living by writing — to help “educate” a technology that would automate their jobs.
I have always considered it a strength, not a weakness, to consult with people with whom we vehemently disagree.
I can’t shake the conviction that a sense of perpetual aggrievement is one of the key components of the engine driving our national estrangement.
I was curious. I had to know what was true. So I set out to educate myself.
Perhaps my brain injected a bit of humor to cover the shock. But I felt the gut punch.
Cartoon by Frank Shiers
Here are other songs I’ve heard over the years that have had this effect on me.
State lawmakers return Jan. 8 to Olympia.
I have been thinking about phrases that we use without considering what they actually imply down deep, or whether they are necessary at all.
Like many of you, I have a wish list for the coming year.
Cartoon by Frank Shiers.
I have always been fascinated by the titles we Americans have bestowed on our towns and cities over time.
“Carbon footprint” was the crowning achievement of an advertising campaign.
“Mister Whale!” the voice said in an elevated register.
What I couldn’t get across to him — I tried — is that you can be the best on the planet at what you do, but if you can’t get along with other human beings, you won’t get anywhere.
I was 22 years old, and in my second year at the University of Washington that fateful day, one of my Classics professors, without knowing it, helped put a name to my dreaded affliction.
I was listening to the radio on the way in to work the other day when I caught a discussion…
