The way it came to me was in a letter. I think a lot of people got them, but I don’t know. It was from Dean Rapelye or maybe Malkiel, and it said something like “you are one of the particularly outstanding students admitted” and to “please consider coming to Princeton.”
I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, a quiet settlement eight miles from Copley Square. The Marathon’s route follows Commonwealth Avenue through Newton into Boston. My house is a block from the Marathon’s 20-mile marker, in the middle of Heartbreak Hill, the most notorious of a series of four steep ascents that runners must endure as they pass through the city.
My first reaction was an unsettled, “What the heck?” Followed by a pissed, “Wow, way over the line.” Finally settling on, “Crap—now what?” From the back cover of the Nass, the Hebrew name of God, the holy Tetragrammaton, was staring up at me with the menacing grin of a camper who just got away with stealing food from the kitchen.
It’s far more common and less noteworthy for the young to obsess. We see it often, a girlish (or boyish) obsession with pink, followed by a girlish (or boyish) obsession with Edward Cullen. So I admit myself guilty of a … Read More
While I am crowded into the park with my Hong Kong friends, awaiting the moment to begin our procession from Causeway Bay westward to Central, I wonder: Why is it that I, a black American who does not even understand Cantonese, who has lived in Hong Kong for less than one month, am out among the crowds supporting the protests?
