I’m a graduate student, a certified mainframe system programmer, and for fun I write fugues. Whatever else may be said about me, stupid isn’t a label that fits. I’m pretty damn smart. Despite this, I’m being consistently put in my place, not by one of my peers, but by an adorable seven-pound cat. Anyone remember …
Esmeralda: What is your name? Butch: Butch. Esmeralda: What does it mean? Butch: I’m American, honey. Our names don’t mean shit. Names have power. They have power in that they frame the conceptual boundaries of what a thing is and is not. The names we …
What may be my most glittering childhood memory consists of me sitting, enraptured, before a television show called The Mysterious Cities of Gold. I was seven. With no effort at all, I can still recall the theme song, the chorus of which went, “Someday we will find the cities of gold.” I found that beautiful, …
Dear Ira, Recently, my local NPR affiliate, KPBS, held their annual Spring pledge drive. For about a week, the station’s regular programming was preempted by pleas for money and promises of chincy trinkets as a reward for my pledge. Among the solicitors for my money were Alec Baldwin and you, who aired a phone conversation …