Essays
1090 results
Page 77
"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.
Essays
4 minute read
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?
Essays
2 minute read
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.
Essays
5 minute read
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.
Essays
5 minute read
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?
Essays
3 minute read
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?
Essays
8 minute read
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
Reflections on culture and gastronomy
I cook, therefore I am: Why isn't cooking a respected art?
We can go naked, but we can't go hungry. So why is food relegated to its position as a weird outlier in the fashion world?
Essays
4 minute read
Pastor Jones, the Koran, and the rest of us
Free speech for morons? It's more useful than you think
The Reverend Terry Jones, whose burning of the Koran provoked four days of rioting and 22 deaths in Afghanistan, may well be a bigot and a moron. Can any good come from his public displays of idiocy? As a matter of fact, yes.
Essays
4 minute read
Culinary rebel: mica in Chestnut Hill
The newest culinary revolution
A few chefs are turning professional cooking upside down, challenging many assumptions about the way foods are prepared and combined. Most are overseas and charge hundreds of dollars for dinner, but one opened recently in Philadelphia, and it's a relative bargain.
Essays
less than a minute read