Essays

1093 results
Page 77
But is sexuality dirty?

Priestly sex abuse: Blaming the hippies

When the shepherd blames the sheep

A report on priestly sex abuse prepared for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops pins the blame not on celibacy but on the sexual revolution that began in the '60s. Take it from one who was victimized by a priest even before that era began: The 1960s were the best thing that ever happened to victims of clerical sex abuse.
Merilyn Jackson

Merilyn Jackson

Essays 5 minute read

Bin Laden and Petraeus: Two birds with one stone

Hit man in the White House

Barack Obama neutralized his two great enemies in one week, the elusive Osama bin Laden and the excessively visible General David Petraeus. Each operation depended on the other; both succeeded. But what is the moral cost of a targeted assassination?
Robert Zaller

Robert Zaller

Essays 5 minute read

Symbols, from bin Laden to the royal wedding

Let them eat symbols!

Osama bin Laden's death. The royal wedding. It seems there's been so much to celebrate lately. Yet what did these symbolic feel-good events actually accomplish?
Maria Thompson Corley

Maria Thompson Corley

Essays 2 minute read
Leitman: Remembrance of leotards past.

"Slam Nation's' night of story telling

In search of that ‘Aha!' moment

It's harder to tell a good story than you might think, especially without a script, as I discovered during a recent night of storytelling at the Kimmel.
Madeline Schaefer

Madeline Schaefer

Essays 4 minute read
But is she meteorologically accurate?

Secrets of Cecily Tynan, weather queen

My kind of meteorologist

What explains the success of TV weather lady Cecily Tynan? Better ask: Why does my barometric pressure rise whenever she smiles at me?
Perry Block

Perry Block

Essays 2 minute read
Good morning, fourth graders— or are you first graders?

School budget cuts: A view from the front lines

Suffer, little children: A Philadelphia teacher's tale

Philadelphia's School District must slash its budget again. In abstract terms, that sounds onerous. But how does it actually affect children and teachers? As one of the latter, allow me to provide a firsthand illustration.

Candy Kean

Essays 5 minute read
She survived, he didn't.

Patti Smith, "Just Kids' and the '60s

The way we were

When Patti Smith and Just Kids get rolling, it's absorbing as both a double rags-to-riches tale and the documenting of a seminal time in American life and culture, told by a woman who was in the thick of much of it and who has been blessed with the sensibility and literary talent to bring it to high-definition life.
Bob Ingram

Bob Ingram

Essays 5 minute read
Could this be the culprit?

Paris, Philadelphia and the Barnes

A landmark cultural event, or a charity ball that got way out of hand?

First Philadelphia's philistines created a faux Barnes museum on the Parkway. Now, with their current Festival, they've put up a phony Eiffel Tower, too. Is this the mark of a great cultural center?
Robert Zaller

Robert Zaller

Essays 3 minute read
Calhoun at work: 'Undefined' stress?

Basketball: Reflections on the Final Four

March Madness or April Fool: NCAA basketball as a commodity

What is college basketball these days, this way station between high school basketball and the bizarre circus of player movement and high finance that has become the National Basketball Association?

Robert Liss

Essays 8 minute read
Kimmel Center's Eiffel Tower: Are you really ready for a Stravinsky-style riot?

Paris in Philadelphia? OK, but why?

On recreating Paris in Philadelphia: Sound and fury, signifying… what, exactly?

With all Philadelphia's current cultural riches, the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts is preoccupied with Paris in the second decade of the last century. That was then; this is now. Let's lose Paris.

Essays 4 minute read