Essays
1091 results
Page 80
A Hare Krishna New Year's Eve
One New Year's Eve that made a difference
After 25 years as a burned-out party girl searching for Mister Right, I finally found serenity. Would you believe it happened on New Year's Eve, at a Hare Krishna ashram, no less?
Essays
3 minute read
How Chinese is China's success story?
China vs. the West: Who has conquered whom?
Has China really won its great battle with the West? In economic terms, maybe. But in the process China has surrendered its identity, while ours remains largely intact.
Essays
4 minute read
Valley Forge reconsidered
To experience Valley Forge as Washington's troops endured it
I've been to Valley Forge National Park many times for jogging, bicycling and picnics. But a new tour program enabled me to see it through the eyes of Washington's soldiers who camped there during the brutal winter of 1777-78.
Essays
4 minute read
A Philadelphia Eagles morality play
All my sons, or: Bread, circuses, the Eagles and us
A coach plagued with two wayward sons finds redemption by embracing a reformed sinner of a quarterback. Is this merely a game, or is this a morality play unfolding before us?
Essays
4 minute read
My job interview with Glenn Beck
The messiah, back in the day: My job interview with Glenn Beck
All I wanted was a more stimulating job. How was I to know that the humorless manic-depressive who interviewed me would soon be acclaimed by millions of Americans as a modern messiah?
Essays
3 minute read
My Christmas shopping list
Santa darling: What a woman really needs for Christmas
It's amazing, the things I never knew I needed until the December Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue arrived in my mail. Now I'm ready to give Santa my Christmas wish list. For good girls only, of course.
Essays
5 minute read
My Greco-Roman Christmas
It's beginning to look a lot like Charybdis
Christmas is a tough time for Jews, as my ancestors and I can personally attest. But suppose that 2,000 years ago Christianity had flamed out and worship of Zeus had prevailed?
Essays
2 minute read
A Christmas Village at City Hall?
It takes a Christmas Village, or: Church and state, perfect together
A Christmas Village was a clever marketing idea in 15th-Century Deutschland. But what is a medieval German shopping mall doing on the property of 21st-Century American taxpayers?
Essays
3 minute read
Literature's global future
The global future of literature, or: Why can't humanists be more humane?
Here we have a new subgenre of what I call International English: Africans interacting with white and black Americans. The way Mengestu weaves writers as diverse as Emily Dickinson and Tocqueville into his narratives of isolation and conflict is astonishing.
Essays
5 minute read
Changing habits: What I learned about nuns
Forbidden fruit: My fantasy life among the nuns
As a suburban Catholic grade school student, my meager education in the mysteries of the opposite sex came by watching— and fantasizing about— nuns.
Essays
6 minute read