Essays
1093 results
Page 92
My grandfather's long voyage home
One man's legacy: My grandfather's final voyage
After his wife died, the old man spent eight months recreating the two-masted Newfoundland fishing schooner of his youth. Then he sailed off, secure in the serene knowledge that his legacy was intact.
Essays
9 minute read
Puddles: A Philadelphia memoir (c. 1950)
For the love of a dog: (A Philadelphia memoir, c. 1950)
My childhood dog Puddles had a mind of his own, but he faithfully followed my disjointed relatives on their upwardly mobile climb from South Philly to West Philly to Overbrook Park. Did we do right by him?
Solnit's "Paradise Built in Hell'
When government is the problem
Do natural disasters bring out the best or the worst in people? Rebecca Solnit argues that such communal calamities trigger a “civic temperament” in human nature that leads people to shine rather than go for each other's throats— which scares the hell out of political leaders.
Essays
2 minute read
"You lie!' and the art of insult
Congressman Wilson's insult: One more thing we can learn from the Brits
South Carolina's Congressman Joe Wilson has drawn both condemnation and praise for shouting, “You lie!” during President Obama's recent speech about health care. But Wilson is an amateur next to members of Britain's Parliament.
Essays
2 minute read
The playground basketball cure
An urban basketball tale: Taking the cure at Morningside Park
It's been half a century since I first cured the twitch in my shoulder with a few good games of city playground basketball. It still works for me today, too.
Essays
2 minute read
Writers and publishers in the electronic age
Fear of Kindle: Don't bet against the paper barons
In an age when people can read Proust and Zola on a portable handheld electronic device, is commercial publishing doomed? If so, how will writers make a living? Not to worry, says a veteran author. Publishers will find a strategy that works. They always have.
Essays
5 minute read
One August day in the park
Too hot for basketball
It's almost 100 degrees and too hot for outdoor basketball— or anything else for a senior citizen like me. But on the court I find a kid who might have been me, once upon a time.
Essays
1 minute read
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Behind the Bicentennial, Part 2: The Germans
Selling Philadelphia, 1976 (Part 2): Romancing the Germans
If the Park Service and Bell of Pennsylvania perceived the PR benefits of getting into the 1976 Bicentennial act, I told myself, perhaps foreign democracies could be enticed to join this democracy birthday party as well. Which is how I wound up lunching with the striking blonde cultural minister of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Essays
5 minute read
Psychology and the stock market
From overconfidence to abject fear: An investment lesson from the ‘Elliott Wave'
Stock market gurus may be passé, but Ralph Elliott was on to something: He perceived that, regardless of the business cycle, human nature moves in repetitive emotional progressions, from fear to optimism to greed and back again. Care to guess what “Elliot Wave Theory” says about the stock market's current recovery?
Essays
5 minute read
Why Ted Kennedy was special
A Kennedy we could relate to
Unlike his brothers, Ted Kennedy was deeply flawed. But those flaws enabled him to identify with the rest of us, and we with him.
Essays
1 minute read