I find that when we talk about sex, especially at college, we focus solely on the physical. What you did, how long it lasted, how many times you did it, and whether your partner, or partners, if you are feeling especially freaky, was up to the task. It feels like a sport. There are all […]
In March 1945, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Travers Harris, head of RAF Bomber Command, wrote a letter addressed to Sir Norman Howard Bottomley, Deputy Chief of the British Air Staff. In the letter, Harris sought to rebut Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s suggestion that the bombing of German cities should be reviewed because it risked […]
I know very little about François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, beyond reading “Candide,” a book I remember disliking thoroughly at age 15. However, throughout college, Voltaire has crept back into my consciousness (albeit in a much more palatable form). Despite having a complicated relationship with religion, Voltaire spoke of it often, writing on a […]
I recently read an article in the “Washington Post” that covered the war in Ukraine. It detailed the devastating reality of war and the depth of the collective grief and suffering in Pryluky, Ukraine, following the killing of the civilian Ivanchenko family. Oleksandr Ivanchenko, his wife Yuliia, and their two young children, Iryna and Maksym, […]
My father is a mama’s boy; anyone who knows him can see it. Most nights, if you walk past his office, you’ll hear him and my grandmother in deep conversation. Each day he calls, and, without fail, she picks up, and they talk and talk. Even when her hearing started to go, they’d talk, though […]
I once saw an old man in the pub. He had sad eyes: that’s what I remember most about him. Sad, slightly glazed eyes that stared into the frothy foam of an undrunk Guinness, waiting to be met with kindness. I pulled up a chair to talk to him, but he didn’t seem interested: “Waiting […]
Earlier this year, I found myself roasting in the Tercentenary Theatre—otherwise known as the Yard—for my older brother’s graduation. The speeches went on and on and on and … you get the gist. There were just so many speeches—a lot of boring ones, some funny ones (thank you, Conan O’Brien ’85 and Ronny Chieng). What […]
A priest and a worshiper, not of the Christian faith but of the priest himself, sit beside each other in silence at a nondescript bus shelter in the middle of the night. The worshiper has an interesting name: Fleabag—an odd thing to call a child. (I doubt it is her real name.) The silence is […]
I previously published an article in the “Harvard Independent” on the subject of faith and our need for it, of any kind, in these trying times we live in. However, I neglected to say fully that faith is not enough. It is my firm belief that as much as one believes, not only when it […]
I often think about last words and what I would say when my time comes. Would mine be poignant, like William James’s: “These, then, are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact”—or ironic, like John Adams’s in 1826: […]
