Essays

1090 results
Page 61
While Marissa Mayer tends her baby, I tend my goldfish.

A day in the life of the home office

It works for me (and my editors, too): One day in the life of a telecommuter

Yahoo's new chief executive, Marissa Mayer, thinks employees are more productive under a supervisor's watchful eye than working at a home. She ought to take a look at my home life as a telecommuter.
Alaina Johns

Alaina Johns

Essays 5 minute read
If it worked for Allen Ginsberg, why not for me?

A Baby Boomer gets a haircut

Just call us 'the second-greatest generation'

In the ‘60s, when I was adolescing, it was parents from the “Greatest Generation” who told their Baby Boomer kids to get a haircut. When did the world change?
Perry Block

Perry Block

Essays 3 minute read
The face of the enemy.

The gay "threat' to religious freedom

Help! I'm being oppressed by gay people!

The writer Damon Linker believes gay marriage will threaten the rights of religious conservatives. In a sense, he's right: They'll lose the right to marginalize gay people, and they may wind up being marginalized themselves.
Alaina Johns

Alaina Johns

Essays 5 minute read
We could have been Cassady (left) and Kerouac, but Fate had other plans.

Two writers, two lovers

Things past: As the world changed around us

Jack was Thomas Wolfe to my Truman Capote. We were would-be writers in love with the idea of each other, young and drunk and 20, and it was enough for that time. When did we change, and how, and why?
Bob Ingram

Bob Ingram

Essays 3 minute read
Wouldn't you like a beautiful Olympic medalist like Julie Foudy in your neighborhood?

The School District and the Olympics

An idea whose time has come: A modest proposal for the School District

Philadelphia's School District is starved for cash and weak on educational vision but steeped in empty classrooms. The U.S. Olympic Committee needs a large city with a ready-made Olympic village. Here's a sure-fire idea for some bright real estate developer.

Marshall A. Ledger

Essays 4 minute read

The next pope

The case for a CEO pope

What the Catholic Church needs now is neither a saint nor a scholar but something it has really never had before: a turnaround specialist.
David Woods

David Woods

Essays 3 minute read
'Does Alaina really need these letters?'

Good riddance to the Post Office (a response)

Your post office, in peace and war

BSR's Reed Stevens pines for the days when the local post office was a community gathering place. I can assure her that it still is— and so is the 12th circle of Hell.
Alaina Johns

Alaina Johns

Essays 5 minute read

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Pope Benedict XVI: Gaudy nonsense, or humanity's best hope?

Papal authority in a democratic world

More powerful than Jesus: Why the papacy still matters

As a new papal election approaches, the pope's absolute religious authority seems an anomaly in a democratic, secular world. But a glance at contemporary Protestantism suggests that Christianity itself may be at stake in the papacy's survival.
Robert Zaller

Robert Zaller

Essays 5 minute read
Some of the women patients were way ahead of me.

Heart attack, Part 8: Putting on the gloves

Take that, Fate! or: Boxing as therapy— and metaphor

My rehab regime put me on a punching bag, just like Sonny Liston. Next thing I knew, I was developing a right hook. Ridiculous for a 70-year-old heart patient, I know. But why was that fellow in the mirror smiling again?
Bob Levin

Bob Levin

Essays 5 minute read
No editor can ever come between us.

Why I blog (a response)

My own personal billboard (and you wonder why I blog)

Professional journalists can't understand why bloggers write for nothing. As a freelance writer in the Age of the Internet, I can think of plenty of good reasons. Let me count the ways.
Alaina Johns

Alaina Johns

Essays 4 minute read