ANOTHER WALK THROUGH THE WASTE LAND I wrote these questions while avoiding reading my undergraduates’ papers on Eliot. Turned out to be more fun than I had anticipated, imagining the range of questions one might consider on the way through this winding thicket of a poem. Wish I’d unearthed this bit of whimsy for the centenary…

. . . even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. (Aeschylus) It’s hard to read these chilling, promising words without remembering where I first…

A plague o’ both your houses! — Mercutio, dying, in Romeo and Juliet, III, i I write this on Shakespeare’s birthday. The festivities began with morning news reports of arguments in Congress over relief funding for states struggling to cope with coronavirus. I am aware that Shakespeare wrote King Lear…

Emma: You’re the writer fellow who’s scared. I’m scared, too. I hear you’ve got a big mouth. Ned: Is a big mouth a symptom? Emma: No, a cure. — Larry Kramer, The Normal Heart There is a time to speak and a time to remain silent. This ancient wisdom is…

The pandemic is global. The whole world is affected. Those are big words. It’s hard to stretch my imagination to the scope of large statistics: 25,000 miles around. 7.5 billion people. Over 2 million cases in 180 countries and 200 territories. It’s big. Statistics can be numbing. We bring them…

A new virus has “invaded” the population and thousands are dead. But this isn’t “Pearl Harbor.” The surgeon general’s use of that metaphor to describe the pandemic is dramatic and perhaps helps make the point that we need to recognize the scope of the threat. …

Word #5 — Media (by guest blogger Frances Shure) The First Amendment guarantees that citizens can speak their minds, and news be delivered through a “free press” that has the right to challenge those in power. …

Word #4 — Socialism (by David Chandler, guest blogger*) This word describes economic systems that aim to govern in the interest of ordinary people rather than just of the rich and powerful. Laissez-faire (i.e. unregulated) capitalism advocates allowing big businesses to operate with minimum regulation with the sole objective of…

Word #3 — War What “war” means keeps changing. A lot of us, when we hear the word “war,” still bring up images of WWII movies. Or imagine an “us” vs. “them” story in which we hope and expect our “team” to win. Some of us import notions of team…