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Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Saturn Is The Biggest Planet On Earth
I appreciate her boldness, and I respond with a giggle that sounds like her father’s, he who laughs. This kind of conviction can be endearing in a four-year-old, though not so endearing in a talk-show host, nor in the president of a country — people who hold the fate of so many lives in that slender gap between their confidence and their ignorance.
September 2007
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
A Good Day
On the bedside table is a card with a picture of a sunflower on it. Inside, my mother has written in her elegant cursive: “Decide to wake up each day with a smile.” Each word is underlined individually. It takes courage, I think, for a mother to write that after her son — my brother — has committed suicide.
May 2007
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Free Spirits
I have walked the few blocks down to the pond on campus tonight because I read in the paper that some Buddhists from the local sangha are going to free the souls of a lot of people who were bombed at Hiroshima.
April 2007
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
An American In Syria
That night I sat on my couch, trying to work through what had happened. I realized that Mohammed had been telling me that he was secret police, and I should never forget it. We could talk about language, or food, or the World Cup, but whatever I told him, he had to report it. He had given me this warning as a friend.
March 2007
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
I Star In My Own Made-For-TV Movie
I first knew Marcus by his constant muttering. In my tracked eighth-grade classes, he was in the lowest track. He had failed every class in every quarter the previous year, for the simple reason that he had not completed a single assignment. Not one. He never did the in-class work I gave him.
February 2007
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Stupid Design
Fundamentalist Christians are leading a movement to teach “intelligent design” in our public schools, as an alternative to evolution.
May 2006
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Three Kims
“C is an average grade,” I tell my students. “C means you’re doing just fine. B is a good grade, a better-than-average grade, and an A is an outstanding grade reserved for truly outstanding work.” I’m lying of course, and I suppose they know it. University-wide, the average grade is a B-minus. Higher for some subjects.
March 2006
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Lessons From Basra
I work in the library of a low-income public school. I can see the kids are interested in war. The boys check out all the books about World War I, World War II, weapons, spies, codes, guns, castles, and knights. Boys without fathers are especially interested in combat.
September 2005
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