Author: admin
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By Defunding the Humanities, Colleges Risk Zombification
In fall 2019, to demonstrate our community college’s commitment to the humanities, a high-level administrator in academic affairs convened a Halloween-themed panel about monsters in literature. What better way to demonstrate devotion to the humanities than through an investigation of the inhuman? A fellow English professor, tasked with chairing the panel, begged me to give…
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Lemon Sky and Detritus at Sunrise
I read about hope this morning on Maria Popova’s site The Marginalian. Popova ponders Steinbeck’s observations about hope as a survival effect of humans—Steinbeck calls it a “diagnostic human trait” (qtd. in Popova)—while he was on an expedition studying sea creatures. Nonetheless, as much as Steinbeck acknowledges that “hope cushions the shock of experience” (qtd.…
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Hit the road, get trucking
Ween’s “Piss up a Rope” came on my playlist as I was running this morning. I think I spent the last six months of 2022 preparing for this to be my anthem for 2023.
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A monkey broke into my kitchen, made a mess, then left me to clean it up
I had a panic attack in the parking lot of the emergency vet, then paid the money. The x-rays only confirmed what I already knew: I had to euthanize my cat, then my relationship. Heartbreak is inevitable when we adopt a pet or start a love affair. The may have been a slow decline for…
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The Weight
I had a dream while Dan and I were dating, one of the times that we had broken up. I was in a web like a moth’s cocoon. I had no responsibility, no fear; I was just suffused with a feeling of safety and inner peace. I remember feeling like that as a child, lying…
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The End of Ramadan in Queens
It is 9 p.m. in northeastern Queens, a cool evening in late July, at the end of Ramadan. Three little girls skip down the street. Their relatives, arrayed in long cotton tunics, trail behind.
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Kate Chopin: A Writer of and beyond Her Time
“Kate Chopin: A Writer of and beyond Her Time.” Women and Southern Naturalism in the Fiction of Kate Chopin. Gale Researcher Guide, July 2018.
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Kate Chopin in Context: New Approaches
Kate Chopin in Context: New Approaches. Co-Editor with Heather Ostman. Palgrave-MacMillan, September 2015.
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How it Begins
An outside observer might think the ground floor of this two-family Tudor-style McMansion in northeastern Queens is empty: coming from a 500-square-foot junior 1-bedroom on the Lower East Side means that Sheila and Pat’s furniture fills only the southwest corner of the living room. Last month Pat’s mom surprised Sheila with an elaborate baby shower,…