Republican City Council Member Max Morano was taking a Diet Coke break with Irma Jansen, his chief of staff. “I can’t believe the city’s Democrats passed the plastic bag ban. Totally counterproductive. The plastic bags I take home with me from the
Libby Speaks 5: Healthcare
Tina Millette waltzed into Democratic Council Member Gavin Kane’s office, as usual, without knocking. “There’s an item in the Gazette about Max Morano’s mother having gone through a successful course of treatment for colon cancer at the Baltic Creek
Disability Appropriation
To accuse a work or its author of cultural appropriation can be to censor a possibly sincere attempt to celebrate fellow human beings. The same can apply to claims of disability appropriation. In my view, the focus should be on countering it, not
Vladimir Putin and Self-Hatred
So many human qualities can be inversions of what they seem. Hatred of someone else can be hatred of oneself. To punish another can be to engage in self-punishment. The subject of inversion came up the other evening during the rebroadcast of Dick
Me Me Me
In my posts to this website, as well as in my fiction, I’m conscious of writing from the point of view of an individual. The argument goes that when we depict personal experience, we speak for many others, even the whole of human experience. But do
Looking Back on a Mediation Program from the COVID Era
For the past twenty-two months, my old office, the New York State Attorney General’s complaint mediation program, has been empty but for two people: a file clerk and a staff member who processes the day’s mail. COVID-19 is the explanation, of course.