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
History
The English Garden Rose
The many-petaled spiral of the English garden rose against the green of a mown lawn and the blue of a nearly cloudless sky brings feelings of wellbeing to our hearts and minds. It sparks a spring day with red, yellow or orange. It is lovely and
Righting the Wrong Word
A few months ago, drafting my response to a questionnaire in advance of an upcoming interview in connection with Caroline, I wrote the phrase “fiction’s ghetto.” Here’s the question and my original answer: Q: Do you have a target reader? A:
Tribalism in Amber
1 When we look back at a long-ago era, what wasn’t obvious to the people then can be plain to us today. As with a tree’s hardening resin, an era’s scurrying, uncertain lives eventually become fixed like insects in amber. It used to be in Europe
The Third Reason
A white woman friend was recently on the subway when a black man sat next to her with his mask lowered just below his nose. A senior citizen who takes every precaution to avoid infection from COVID-19, she stood and walked to an empty seat at the
Planet Pluto, Society and Civilization
Poor Pluto: reclassified from planet to mere ice body. Does Pluto care? It’s still a heavenly body, and it seems to have been content these past several billion years to keep pushing along the rim of the solar system. No, it’s people who care. A