The Twitter community has been pretty smug today about spreading the word of Osama bin Laden's assassination faster and further than traditional news outlets or 24-hr cable stations, and understandably so. That's where I "was" when I first got a sense of the news--my physical location is actually irr… Read full post »

One of the best compliments I've ever received arrived in the form of a dear friend's words: "I can see your future--you're going to be a public scholar."  I imagined Socrates accosting people in the marketplace and asked what she meant, and she struggled to circumscribe the idea. "You know, som… Read full post »

Like a field, my mind cycles through seasons, and sometimes the season is a fallow one, when the soil needs to rest and replenish its nutrients. I have had a long period of mental infertility, when the frenzied activities of my life compensated for the unproductivity and inadequacy of my mind.… Read full post »

Some of my greatest frustrations revolve around not being able to "authentically" experience something. One time I brought some visiting friends to the Met's fabulous and fun Egyptian wing. As we stood in the reconstructed Mastaba Tomb of Perneb, I inched up as close to the rope as I could, trying… Read full post »

I don't know why I expected it to be different. Last year I had only been in New York for two weeks when 9/11 rolled around, and undignified as it was by a school orientation and a trip to Queens to pick up a Futon bought off Craigslist, I hardly noticed… Read full post »

Recently, a childhood friend came to visit me. Sitting companionably next to us at our hip Brooklyn restaurant table, the cute waiter covered his bases: “No vegetarians, right?” Taylor responded, “Right!” at the exact same moment as I timidly raised my index finger, in a gestu… Read full post »