It is with a certain sense of shame that I confess that until this summer I had never read Paradise Lost all the way through. I had eagerly read the excerpts assigned for class; I had read literary criticism on it with great earnestness; I had celebrated Milton’s 400th birthday gleefully; but I had never
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I can’t imagine a more beautiful place to write than where I’m currently sitting, in the lounge of Grand Teton National Park’s Jackson Lake Lodge. The view from here steals your breath away, especially at sunset when the mountains glow from behind with a golden halo and the sky turns a profound royal purple. If
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I extend my sincere condolences to those of you who have never tasted the scintillating brilliance that is the prose of P.G. Wodehouse, and recommend that you go out at once to find one of his books before further damage occurs. The British author, who wrote scores of books from the turn of the last
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As I walked in the square this week, I encountered a congregation of persons antiquely dressed. The men I do not remember, but I have a vivid picture of the women wearing ankle-length skirts and bonnets. The sight of these people was so striking that I didn’t notice an older lady approaching me until she
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As long as you’re a human being, particularly when you’re thinking about your life, you tend to think narratively. That is, as a series of events along a timeline, little dots in the past tracing up to where your feet stand in the present. We tell little stories about ourselves to ourselves all the time.
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I remember it like it was yesterday. I had just gotten my first exam back from Chem 5, and I was terrified to look at the grade. I knew I had not done well; following my high school habit, I had only prepared for the exam the day before. That turned out to be a huge mistake. I looked at my score in dismay: 46%.
