Twenty-one years ago, Carol Burnett and four other actors performed a Broadway revue of Stephen Sondheim songs called Putting it Together. I didn’t get to see it on Broadway, but I just watched the filmed version on DVD, which you… Read More ›
Life
So you wake up one morning, blind in one eye, and soon you learn that you have a 20% chance of going blind in the other eye too…
No, it has never happened to me. And I hope not to you either. But it did happen to journalist Frank Bruni. I have just finished reading his resilient memoir, The Beauty of Dusk. Bruni’s affliction, non-arteritic anterior optic neuropathy,… Read More ›
Gulp. Are there (were there?) special math problems given only to Jews?
Yes, unfortunately there is (or was?) such a thing. The special problems were, of course, more difficult than the regular math problems. Much more difficult. I learned about this from Tanya Khovanova’s Math Blog, where she explains “how during entrance… Read More ›
“Yes, it’s my real name. Shut up!”
You probably don’t believe it’s his real name, so check out the first chapter of Randy Rainbow’s memoir, Playing with Myself. He even includes a photo of his birth certificate (but Republicans will probably claim that it’s a fake—just like… Read More ›
Looking forward to a local cat café
What’s wrong with you, Boston? Tokyo has 100 cat cafés; Boston has zero! But that may be changing—for the better, of course, since we couldn’t have fewer than zero. Richard Auffrey, better known as The Passionate Foodie, recently wrote about… Read More ›
What could possibly shock a German?
You may think the answer is “nothing.” Except maybe a failure to follow the rules. But you would be wrong. By this point you are probably familiar with Felicia Hofner, a.k.a. “Feli from Germany.” After six years in Cincinnati her… Read More ›
What are we? “Jewish Americans” or “American Jews”?
The excellent PBS documentary from 2008, The Jewish Americans, is an in-depth account of three hundred years of American Jews. I have no idea why it took me 14 years to watch it! The mix of presenters includes public figures,… Read More ›
Fortunately, things have changed in the past 30 years.
Or have they? A couple of days ago, as part of an ongoing trip down memory lane on Apple Music, I happened to be listening to a 1992 song by Fred Small, The Marine’s Lament. Since it’s only two minutes… Read More ›
More chaos! More CatNet!
The second novel in a series is always worse than the first. Of course that’s not true—unless you replace “always” with “often” or perhaps even “usually.” Or perhaps the wishy-washy “sometimes.” All generalizations are false, as they say. Including this… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 