Some time around late November I start a version of coffee and conversation in my head. The question for debate has been the same: is Martin Luther King, Jr. too remote and too much of an icon to matter anymore? When is the reflection successful and what makes any of this matter? This year, I’ve […]
It is officially Red Carpet Season. I love the fret about what to wear, the Twitter snark about what so-and-so ended up donning, the bright lights, the photos, the music and the scene and be seen. Hollywood isn’t alone in the buzz. We’re rolling out the red – excuse me, Scarlet – carpet for […]
Nelson Mandela was the shining example of grace and dignity on this earth, with politics that tore at the limits of nonviolence within a surreal, dystopian society. He awakened my intellectual fire and later conquered a world. His words, work, and persistence insisted that I be conscious. He was my Sengbe Pieh, Harriet Tubman, Ella […]
Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war. The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. […]
We dream of pleasant surprises from the routine that are about to happen this weekend- a national, professional sports championship that will be awarded in our city, along with the annual festiveness that comes with Halloween. The people of Boston are host to Major League Baseball’s final championship games of the season. The 2013 […]
Are you concerned about safety on campus? Do you live off-campus and want to hear about support and services available to you?
Sure! Student clubs are a great for meet-ups with other students, but student-run organizations are also a decent way work on an initiative; plan a specific event; or, work on a key cause with other interested students.
This Commencement Spree is my riff on Brother Lawrence Whitney’s (Brother Larry) Howard Thurman remix: I make of my life an offering to you, the young folk. There is a surrender of the life that redeems, purifies, and makes whole. Every surrender to a particular person, event, circumstance, or activity is but a token surrender, […]
In the midst of your learning, I hope your reflection continues. I look for poetry in the ordinary and grace from the terrible. The chorus at the end of The Cure at Troy in Seamus Heaney’s translation of Sophocles’ The Philoctetes keeps me hopeful: Human beings suffer, They torture one another, They get hurt and […]
Last week I had a chance to take it to the stage. As part of an open mic night I got a few minutes to stand in front of bunch of folks being wonky and geekin’ out about the future of higher education in the States. Instead of a speech, I dropped a little Nina […]