“You have to be always drunk,” wrote the French poet Charles Baudelaire. “That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.” “But on what?” Baudelaire asks. With “wine, with
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Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, at a recent event with a liberal audience, praised Justice Clarence Thomas, her ideological adversary. Sotomayor said, “He is a man who cares deeply about the court as an institution.” She added that while the two often disagree over judicial decisions, “We share a common understanding about people and kindness
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A while back I started an experiment of smiling brightly at perfect strangers while out and about doing my daily routine. Knowing that times are difficult, my intention was to bring a little joy into random people’s lives, while also causing them to wonder where my joy came from. Admittedly, I don’t always practice this
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Back in the day, guidance counselors were those helpful (but not unduly intrusive) high school officials who dispensed vocational and career advice, reminded you of college application deadlines, and made sure your transcripts and letters of recommendations got where they needed to go. But like so much else in the 1960s and 1970s, traditional roles
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Presentism: Now there’s one ugly duckling of a word. My online dictionary defines presentism as “uncritical adherence to present-day attitudes, especially the tendency to interpret past events in terms of modern values and concepts.” To my surprise, the 40-year-old dictionary on my shelf also contains this eyesore of a word and definition. To be present,
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How did the non-conformists and radicals of the 1960s and 1970s, who were also heavily skeptical of the medical-industrial complex and who helped turn alternative medicine into a billion dollar industry, become some of the most rabid supporters of lockdowns and COVID vaccine mandates? My mother, a woman who has spat in the face of
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