Be “Warm”! And “Competent”! Now!

Lizza-Hillary-Clinton-1200Fantastic new article just out in The New Yorker, parsing Hillary’s struggle to find balance in public perception– one that can take her seriously as a warm, personable candidate as well as a competent one. It’s not a struggle a man in the same position faces. Who, anyway, is asking them to “play the grandpa card”? The culture of this country makes me shudder.

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Crab Meat on Bun

photo (79)When my grandmother was still alive I would take these long, blank trips out to visit her in small-town Wisconsin. The whole time she always seemed to be preparing for the next thing– laying her clothes out for tomorrow night’s dinner. Getting the oranges ready for juicing on Tuesday. She jumped up a lot. She was always busy.
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Work, Poem

busWe’re mere inches and millimeters away from the start of the public school year here in NYC, and the District 7 high school where I work is abuzz, I mean abuzz, with go-get-it-ness and get-it-done-ness and other forms of generalized optimism before the students arrive and deflate these many tires. Ohhh man, what it is to teach. What it is.

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