ANOTHER THOUGHT ABOUT STEVE’S DEATH: A social molecule is a group of co-creators of a private but shared reality — a sort of living group-mythos inexplicable to those outside its specific bounds but real as air to those within. When…
Tag: people
Ones I have known, if even tangentially.
Pithyism #99
WE ARE IN TROUBLE IF our need to be heard exceeds our need to understand — or to be understood.
Of Archetypes and Inevitability
IF YOU BELIEVE IN AN afterlife, then one reason my friend Steve Territo died yesterday is to hold the good tables for the rest of us. And if you knew Steve, you know why that’s apt: I don’t have one…
Sigh, Kitty, Sigh
IF ONLY WE COULD TEACH the cat the meaning of “wait five minutes” …
Harlan’s Secret
“People on the outside think there’s something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn’t like that. You sit in…
Sorting Debbie
IN THE WAKE OF SINGER and prolific synagogue-music innovator Debbie Friedman, I find myself mourning her death but ambivalent about her legacy. The mourning: If you worship at most “progressive” (i.e., non-Orthodox) North American synagogues, you’re familiar with her work…
Vicaritor Rex (noun)
ONE WHO OR THAT WHICH provides a satisfying and compelling sense of the little guy “getting his own back.” (See: David, Goliath and; Slater, Steven; Man, Tank.)
“What do YOU like about being a spiritual leader?”
THIS QUESTION WAS POSED TO me by a friend who’s considering the path. Since I have some small experience with the subject, and some readers have some interest in it, I’m posting my reply here and will be absolutely unoffended…
Introductions
SOMETHING HOLY/TENDER/FRAGILE/GIDDY THERE IS ABOUT someone introducing a member of one world to a member of another: as, one’s relatives to one’s colleagues, one’s colleagues to one’s friends, one’s friends to one’s relatives. It’s more than just a person-to-person connection.…
Pithyism #6-7/8
EVERYBODY IS A BIT LOONY, until you understand their reasons.
Viral Into Life
WE’VE ALL SEEN THOSE VIDEOS of people semi-spontaneously bursting into song in public places, to the bemusement, amusement, and eventual participation of the earshot citizenry. Let’s take it offline, folks. Bust into song. Right now. Wherever you are and with…
Fear of Fear Ourselves
WE ARE FROZEN INTO SOCIETAL uselessness through fear of liability: who’s responsible, what are the ramifications, an obsessive-compulsive moral handwash. Perhaps that’s one reason scapegoating is so popular: release of tension. Everything flows when the ice is cracked with a…