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Bitter Lessons

What’s Wrong With American Teachers

Lecturing age-grouped children in cellblock rooms of featureless buildings is a nightmarish way to teach. (And please don’t bring to mind images of slum schools; I’m thinking of wealthy, suburban schools.) What it does to teachers — not to mention students — isn’t pleasant to see.

Christmas In Seattle

I thought about the crackers and water in my room. Pride and weariness battled in my mind. How had it come to this? Just months ago I had been a well-paid, respected professional.

The Birds Of Silicon Valley

My job was to write computer training programs. But sometimes my mind wandered, and I turned to look out the window at the people in the parking lot, the cars on the street, and, especially from my sixth-floor cubicle, the birds that soared in the gulf of air between me and the ground.

Natalie

There is no simple way, no easy or uncomplicated way, to look into the face of a filthy old woman on the street. We are frightened or saddened or repelled, feel guilty if not resentful, and then we avert our eyes.

Friend Of The Sun

Fool’s Gold

Why should someone like me worry about the recession as much as I do? I didn’t have any money before it, and I won’t have any money after it. The housing it is now killing me to buy will cost less the next time I have to buy. I have more to gain than to lose.

Money

Lunch money, Las Vegas, art for the people

Living Simply

At fifty-five, I look back on a life so complicated that had I set out to make things hard for myself, I couldn’t have done a better job.

Friend Of The Sun

Euclid’s Hell

It’s amazing to me how little respect most people seem to have for reality. The mind is capable of tricking us into accepting its version of what takes place around us. We repeatedly mistake our perceptions for the stuff of existence, even when we know better.