There’s no reason that competence and authenticity should be odds with one another. Yet many of the ways that we read authenticity—Bernie Sanders’ oversized suits, per say, or Trump’s disregard for political correctness—do defy the codes through which we usually measure a candidate’s fitness for office.
I’ve made a vow not to subject students to my highly educated and refined political world view, aka my rantings and ravings about the contemporary political situation, but I don’t mind admitting that I’m totally obsessed with U.S. electoral detailia … Read More
The Tour “There’s so much to see and to do in New Jersey!” The Triangulites belted out the lyric from the Princeton Triangle show. New Jersey! Yeah! Except, we were in North Carolina! And we have sung the damn song … Read More
I walked into the University chapel with a group of white-haired men in blue suits. I paused in front of an usher who wore a nametag with an orange and black ribbon pinned to it: Somers K. Steelman ’54. I extended my hand for a program. He looked at my unbrushed hair, sweatshirt, jeans, and flip flops.
Ten years ago this month, in Chicago, Illinois, the Smashing Pumpkins began to record their third album, “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.” A child born in that year is fast approaching the age at which we heard that album … Read More
“I watched these two women, strangers only a few hours before, wrapped in grief and helping each other to cope. Ecotherapy teaches that the harshness of suffering and loss can awaken us to beauty.”
Fine Hall: Barad-dûr, but it’s nice at night. After dinner you and I go to the third floor lounge to study. We look at the pictures of graduate students. 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995. They all have funny hair but we agree that their glasses are stylish and 1991 wore the best jeans. We sit back down to do work but after five minutes we’re restless again in the room with brown carpeting, brown walls, and brown ceilings. “Do you want to check out the top floor?” I ask. We go up and try the door. Locked. We settle for the next floor down, and walk to the corners where we look out of narrow floor-to-ceiling windows. There are seven thousand students on campus but we don’t see anybody. The corner alcoves fit just two people.
“Lil Peep’s ghostly vocals float drowsily over maximalist emo-trap beats without drowning in them…leaving us with a taste of what might have been: the soaring emotional heights to which rap, the most notoriously heartless genre, almost rose.”
