July 12, 2012 Geography: from Greek “geographia,” lit. “to describe or write about the Earth.” It happened sometime during my junior year at college in San Diego. I was studying at the library for a midterm when a handsome boy (a business major in his senior year) whom I’d seen around campus, asked if he […]
The Voyager Spacecraft: Amazing, Musically & Otherwise, after 35 Years
June 28, 2012 The other night I hosted a dinner party. One of our guests worked at JPL. I brought out my copy of the box set Murmurs of Earth, published by Time Warner about 20 years ago. It’s one of the box sets I saved when moving and downsizing last summer, because it’s rare […]
Higher Education in Iran: The Path to Freedom and…Singlehood
June 21, 2012 Three years ago Iranians marched through the streets of Tehran and other major cities in Iran protesting the presidential elections, which soon became known as the Green Revolution. I remember watching news clips and YouTube videos of the protests and found myself moved by the faces of all the people marching, especially […]
Biting the Hand that Feeds Us: Turning Our Backs on Out-of-State / International Students
June 14, 2012 I recently read an article on the MercuryNews.com about a constitutional amendment proposed by the California Senator Michael Rubio (D-Shafter) that would “prevent any UC campus from enrolling more than 10 percent of its undergraduate students from outside California.” According to the article, “out-of-state and international students made up 8.4 percent of […]
The Preferred Path
June 7th 2012 “Sometimes a pattern chosen by default can become a path of preference.” -Mary Catherine Bateson, from Composing a Life My first clay elephant made in kindergarten I recently found an old manila envelope in which my mother had carefully saved what must have been some of her favorite things of my early […]
DREAMS OF A COMMON LANGUAGE
May 31th 2012 The West African women are warm and welcoming. I am here to observe their conversational English group, which I will be helping to lead a few weeks from now in July and August, as a literacy volunteer tutor. Their group has been meeting at the library for six months. I am not […]
What is Memorial Day?
May 24th 2012 Tweet
Useless Literary Terms Come Alive
May 17 2012 Synedoche: figure of speech wherein part represents whole, e.g. “crown” stands for “king” or “queen”. Objective Correlative: T.S. Eliot’s literary device, akin to metaphor, where an object or thing represents an emotion or feeling. How do I know such obscure things? Rather than following my dad’s advice to pursue a more practical […]
Repetition Plus Expression Equals Satisfaction
May 10 2012 On a week bookended by a beginning guitar class at McCabe’s Guitar Shop and a painting retreat in Encino, I was buffeted by a key challenge of the reinventing Boomer. The guitar classes were held in a room that does triple duty as concert hall, classroom, and showroom. All manner of stringed […]
Embracing International Students: Lowering Standards for the Almighty $$$
May 3, 2012 As we seek ways to attract international students to our college campuses, lowering our standards and accepting candidates solely to boost revenue and clout doesn’t seem to be a smart way of going about it. But, it is exactly what’s happening. As states cut back on subsidies, slashing budgets and tightening belts, […]