2009-01-31
I could’ve kicked myself for chasing a woman bass player all the way to Cincinnati: a month after I got there, I left her for a twenty-three-year-old grocery clerk. A few weeks later that was over, too, and I didn’t even have money for a bus ticket back to Dallas. I hadn’t been able to find a gig
2009-01-31
Red roses were her favorites, her name was also Rose. And every year her husband sent them, tied with pretty bows. The year he died, the roses were delivered to her door. The card said, "Be my Valentine, "like all the years before. Each year he sent her roses, and the note would always say, "I
2009-01-31
Most of us look away when we pass strangers. It is the expectional person who stops to help the woman maneuvering her kids and groceries up the staircase. We rarely give up in line or on the subway or bus. Locked into our automobiles, we prefer gridlock to giving way. These daily encounters, wh
2009-01-31
My father, Dale, hits on P.J. Harvey at her rock show. Actually, it is a P.J. Harvey lookalike. There are dozens like her, wannabe rock stars wearing ankle boots with pin-sized heels. The others, boys with thrift shop tees over crisp oxfords, men like my dad whom everyone assumes is a roadie because
2009-01-31
No air conditioning? How can you sleep??a friend asks, horrified. I've just revealed that my family has decided to turn the air conditioner off and trim our electric bill. "Nobody opens a window, day or night," warns another friend, whose windows have been painted shut for a decade. "It's just no
2009-01-31
guard came to the prison shoe shop where Jimmy Valentine was working and took him to the prison office. There the warden handed Jimmy his pardon, which had been signed that morning by the governor. He took it quietly; he was too tired to show excitement. He had been in prison nearly ten months and
2009-01-31
Progress in predicting the outcome of relationships, and information about the genetic roots of fidelity, might also make proposing marriage more like a job application—with associated medical, genetic and psychological checks. If it were reliable enough, would insurers cover you for divorce? And a
2009-01-31
Lawrence Sterne to Miss L.Yes! I will steal from the world, and not a babbling tongue shall tell where I am. Echo shall not so much as whisper my hiding place. Suffer the imagination to permit it as a little sun-light cottage, on the side of a romantic hill. Dost thou think I will leave love and fri
2009-01-31
of study (论读书) STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment, and disposition of business. For expert men can exe-cute, and perhaps judge of particulars,
2009-01-31
My grandmother was an iron-willed woman, the feared matriarch of our New York family back in the 1950s. When I was five years old, she invited some friends and relatives to her Bronx apartment for a party. Among the guests was a neighborhood big shot who was doing well in business. His wife wa
2009-01-31
I know now that the man who sat with me on the old wooden stairs that hot summer night over thirty-five years ago was not a tall man. But to a five-year-old, he was a giant. We sat side by side, watching the sun go down behind the old Texaco service station across the busy street. A street that I
2009-01-31
On the Internet, as in life, men and women have different motivations for doing what they do. According to a recent report from Pew Internet and American Life, women view the Internet as a place to extend, support, and nurture relationships and communities. Men tend to see it as an office, a librar
2009-01-31
If I were a Boy Again假如我又回到了童年 If I were a boy again, I would practice perseverance more often, and never give up a thing because it was or inconvenient. If we want light, we must conquer darkness. Perseverance can sometimes equal genius in its results. “There are only two creatures,
2009-01-31
最后一课 The Last Class 都德的《最后一课》相信大家都在课本上读过,故事借亚尔萨斯省一个小孩小弗朗士的自述,具体地描写一所小学所上的最后一堂法文课。作家回避了普法战争的正面战场,而把笔墨转向一幅极为平常的生活画面:小学生迟到,老师讲课、提问,习字,拼音练习,下课……描写极为冷静、客观、朴素,却极具感
2009-01-31
布雨之龙The Dragons Who Rained 一个英文写成的中国传统神话故事,关于中国四条江的形成。 Long, long ago, rain stopped falling in China. The people prayed for rain to the Jade Emperor, for it was he who looked after everything in heaven, on the land and in the sea, but no matter how much they
2009-01-31
The art of living is to know when to hold fast and when to let go. For life is a paradox: it enjoins us to cling to its many gifts even while it ordains their eventual relinquishment. The rabbis of old put it this way:" A man comes to this world with his fist clenched, but when he dies, his hand is
2009-01-31
Walter B. Jehovah, for whose name I make no apology since it really was his name, had been a solipsist all his life. A solipsist, in case you don't happen to know the word, is one who believes that he himself is the only thing that really exists, that other people and the universe in general exist o
2009-01-31
Walter B. Jehovah, for whose name I make no apology since it really was his name, had been a solipsist all his life. A solipsist, in case you don't happen to know the word, is one who believes that he himself is the only thing that really exists, that other people and the universe in general exist o
2009-01-31
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the art since the medium is the human mind and spirit. I shall speak only of my first teacher because in addition to the other things, she b
2009-01-31
Once, during the course of a conversation with a colleague who was a woman of color, I happened to refer to her as an African American. Her response left me confused. "Don't call me that," she said. "I've never been to Africa; I don't know the first thing about Africa. You can call me black or you c