“Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” “Poetry can break open locked chambers of possibility, restore numbed zones to feeling, recharge desire,” Adrienne Rich wrote in contemplating what poetry does. “Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock,” Denise Levertov asserted in her piercing statement…
Most of us have imagined a different version of our lives. The career we almost pursued. The relationship that might have lasted. The city we never moved to. The talent we never developed. The person we were before loss changed everything. Psychologists call these counterfactuals—mental simulations of how life might have unfolded if we had…
We Americans generally do health and nutrition badly. One reason for this is that we are often systematically misled by the state at the behest of commercial interests. Ask a nutritionist you trust about the federal food pyramid. Another reason consists of all the usual critical thinking problems humans have combined with the influence of…
