Category: Campus

A Visit to the Dead Sea Scrolls

So I was cold lounging with my niece in Seattle, just sitting, watching Dora the Explorer and shooting the shit. My niece is nearly a year old, so her opinions are not quite as developed or polished as they could be, but she’s got some thoughts and a taste for the higher things.

by on

Deb-ball Delights

I started home for Thanksgiving Tuesday afternoon, willingly cutting shorter my half-week of classes to add a full day to my debutante preparations. It hadn’t taken me long to pack and add a few necessary additions to cover every possible situation and temperature that four and a half days in Jackson, Mississippi on a debutante and holiday week could throw at me.

by on

School Spirit

Justin Pierce Baldwin Gerald: I live my life in a state of bemused annoyance. Sometimes, mostly on the weekends, the irritation subsides, and I experience fleeting moments of unadulterated joy. At other times, the humor that keeps me afloat is … Read More

by on

The Ethics of Poetry

It’s the images of a frying egg which haunt me, I think, and make my responses to his question habitual. “No,” I respond again. This is probably the fifth time he’s asked me to get high with him. Something about … Read More

by on

Perspectives on the Midterms

On CNN, I think, the election night coverage was titled ‘America Votes.’ I was watching and a friend next to me said, “No, it doesn’t.” At face value, the descriptive statement ‘America Votes’ is false. America really doesn’t vote, at … Read More

by on

Perspectives on the Midterms

I’ve made a vow not to subject students to my highly educated and refined political world view, aka my rantings and ravings about the contemporary political situation, but I don’t mind admitting that I’m totally obsessed with U.S. electoral detailia … Read More

by on

Perspectives on the Midterms

My father is a newsman, and during the election season he heads down to D.C. to do reporting. When Rumsfeld resigned, I knew that he would be thrilled. Donald Rumsfeld is one of my father’s least favorite Americans. When I … Read More

by on

A Paean to Woods and Death

On autumn Sundays my parents would fuck wildly, like children. I remember this vividly. It was November and the air had begun to turn to steel. The turn was final. Pennsylvania does this each year—dies, maybe before Halloween, maybe after, … Read More

by on

Dionysian Delight

Espionage becomes us. We traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts this weekend on a reconnaissance training mission to discover restaurants and entertainment venues that snarky Harvard students frequent. Posing as Mr. Black and Mrs. White – and alternately Vladimir Bolshoi Khoi and … Read More

by on

The Debutante Diaries

A broad archway of fake sunflowers and fall foliage stood at the head of a long runway of bright green Astroturf. Dozens of women milled around, filling the room with gossipy chatter. No, this wasn’t Michael’s at the beginning of the fall holiday season.

by on

FIJI Water

The myriad of bottled water options currently flooding the market – spring, mineral, purified, distilled, carbonated, oxygenated, caffeinated, vitamin-enriched, flavored – leave many a savvy beverage consumer mystified by their relative merits and flaws. As if bottled water weren’t decadent … Read More

by on

Hey Hey, Ho Ho: Polarization’s Gotta Go

Polarization pays. For every DailyKos, there’s an O’Reilly Factor; for every Michael Moore, an Ann Coulter; for every Russ Feingold – a liberal populist Senator eyeing the Presidency – there’s a Sam Brownback, an evangelical conservative Senator hoping for the … Read More

by on