We sit by the window, eating Chobani with rigid, robust, black C-store spoons. “Did you know Chobani was actually founded by a Turkish dude?” I say. She is Greek, and I know some of the tumultuous regional history, but I am still surprised to see her eyes well with tears.
As we approach the Sunrise Senior Living Home in Farmington Hills, Michigan, my grandmother explains that it houses two separate programs. The primary one is for the elderly who cannot fully care for themselves. The second, called “Reminiscence,” is for those who also have severe memory problems. That’s where my grandfather has lived for the past six months.
The genealogy of nominative determinism begins with my ambivalent attitude toward this series of articles. Whenever the Nassau Weekly name column would come up in casual conversation, I would exclaim that there could be nothing potentially interesting in a piece truly about the writer’s name. After all, I thought, what would have to be true for an article about your name to be interesting?
A young man gets off his bike and stands over the body of the squirrel just next to his front tire. As the blood courses from its body and it moves from the world of the living to that of the dead, from warm, pulsating, parsimonious creature to cold carcass, he is likely considering his options.
The annual campus-wide dodgeball tournament dates back to 2005 and has quickly become an exciting Princeton tradition. With four brackets of different sizes, clubs of all kinds can enter the tournament, and the winners get nice cash prizes.
A few months ago, a prospective student from my high school (let’s call her “Susan”) visited Princeton. I did not know her—her interests, her talents, her social proclivities—and yet I found myself on the verge of launching into a speech about how Princeton is the best school—probably in the world—and how she would in all likelihood be denying herself the possibility of self-transcendence if she applied elsewhere early action.
There is a debate among medieval Jewish philosophers about the permissibility of conceiving of God in physical form. Maimonides, heavily influenced by Aristotelian philosophy, lists the non-corporeality of God as one of the thirteen core principles of faith, and writes in his legal code that anyone who says that God has a body is a heretic with no position in the World to Come.
Brian introduced me to rap music on bus #177 in what I think was fourth grade. I know it was 177 and not 181 or 161 because this memory is accompanied by a host of other unique sensory inputs: the … Read More