Monthly Archives: April 2011

The guests at the royal wedding ended up eating fruit cake. Not most people’s first choice, but certainly historically significant and appropriate. Our Neolithic ancestors ground up grains, added water, and cooked these ‘oatcakes’ on a hot stone. The ancient Egyptians, followed by the Greeks, also made cakes…which basically were fruit cakes: dense, bready creationsContinue reading “mangez la gâteau! mangi la torta! coma el pastel! eat cake!”

When I have taught Black Boy to my 9th grade Honors classes, I have begun outside of the novel… first with the Prologue to Invisible Man. I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance,Continue reading “make the familiar strange”

Well, apparently you have been hiding under a rock… “The Rock” perhaps… and he’s giving you the people’s eyebrow. The aforementioned self-proclaimed “People’s Champ” is thereby not only our defender, our hope, our warrior king… but also possesses an unusual skill with his upper orbital eye hair fringes (a.k.a. his eyebrows.) Is he a heroContinue reading “can you smell what’s cookin’ beneath the people’s eyebrow?”

I blame it on life. Damn life! I am lagging behind in my reading of my favorite magazines — The New Yorker and New York Magazine. As I worked my way through the Feb. 14th issue of New York mag yesterday, I began an article about U.S. soldiers, post-traumatic stress, and the laundry list of medications that ex-GIs areContinue reading “alone together: driving and crowds”

My first request! And since I sleep so little, the theme of night sounds is one of which I could write at length. When all becomes dark, when the world consists of you lying on your bed pondering the ebony cloak of eventide, it is sound itself that intensifies and becomes a symphonic world ofContinue reading “listen to the night”

It is about this time of year that schools have spring vacations and colleges release their students to put on display all that they haven’t acquired over the past semesters in places like Panama City Beach or Cancun. And, of course, summer vacation for both parties is not far off. If you think about societyContinue reading “idle and demoralizing vacations”

It is Sunday which only means one thing! Actually, it means about a million different things to a million different people, but here on Tomorrow’s Theme, it only means one thing! Thank god for only having one thing to deal with! Thank god for themes of the day! Anyway, to get to the point, SundayContinue reading “the softest smell”

According to the Food Channel, one of the Top Ten Food Trends for 2011 is that of men invading the kitchen… and cooking with all the snobbery and possessiveness and self-righteousness once reserved for women in this decidedly female sphere. These “gastrosexuals” or “kitchen bitches” have invaded the domain once both proudly and spitefully reserved for the ‘second sex.’ Cooking their ‘dudeContinue reading “gender-bending hash-slinging headaches”

Valentine’s Day is a day I usually choose to rapidly pass over, reminding myself that ignorance is the true bliss. This past V-Day, though, I was alternately amused and touched (and sometimes just grossed out) by the New York Times proposal to its readers to ‘sum up a relationship in six words.’ Obviously, I was not aloneContinue reading “get happy in six words”

Yes, tomorrow is Earth Day, but I’d rather think about this day proximally and obliquely. I teach this way too, believing there is much to be seen in the circuitous journey that enhances our understanding of the original ‘text.’ And so the pear. Last year, right about this time, I read a short book byContinue reading “pears”