Writer
Today, I have a day off from teaching school. In New Haven, Connecticut, the holiday is officially called “Indigenous Peoples Day” and “Italian Heritage Day,” a compromise between the liberal community and the Italian community for renaming Columbus Day. On Saturday, when I walked my dogs, I saw members of the Italian community gathered in a small ceremony at the park by my house, circled around…
When I heard my friends and neighbors talking about defunding and disbanding the police, my first instinct was to dismiss it as ignorance. Nope. Absolutely not feasible. When I heard them say all cops are bad, my mind immediately went to the kind police officers I had known in my life—to the engaged, cool-headed school police officer at the school I taught at in Baltimore, who we relied on to…
E: What do you think it would take to get men to take responsibility for their part in unwanted pregnancies? F: I think we should cleave off their toes.
“If you’re going to write an article about ‘being woke,’ I think you should really lean into your personal experiences as a fundamentalist,” my wife suggested after reading the first draft of what would become this article. “But I’m not a fundamentalist. I never was a real fundamentalist.” “You don’t think you used fundamentalist rhetoric during the election?” “No.” “Hmm.” “Don’t ‘hmm’ me. I would…
Not long ago, my wife, a composer, asked me if I would ever advise a student from a low-income family to pursue a career in the arts. “What do you mean? Of course.” “Really?” “If that’s what they wanted to do, and they had talent ” “But they don’t have money.” “If a student were really passionate and talented, she’d figure out a way.” That’s always been something my parents told me. “Think about…
As we pulled into the massive Willow Creek Community Church campus, Frances and I tried to figure out the best place to park in case we needed to make a quick exit. We weren’t scared, not really. We just had a long way to go afterwards. But everything was so streamlined with cones and volunteers that we had no choice but to park with the rest of the crowd, just behind the massive “Dad Fest” picnic…
I confess: I started going to church again. I swore I wouldn’t. After straying from the fold six years ago, I swore I would never again, by my presence, tacitly condone such a flawed, corrupt, damaging institution. I swore I would never sit in a pew, crack open a hymnal, or fill in the o’s of a Sunday bulletin with one of those dull, little pencils by the offertory envelopes. But I have. And I…
“This whole school triflin’.” One of my sophomores back in Baltimore said that while taking his seat in my English class. I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant. “Triflin ’” can mean a lot of things. He could have been complaining about any number of issues with the school: the roaches and mice that regularly scurried across the floor; or the fact that there was no AC or air flow—and that our water…
One of the major projects for our summer in Aspen (where Frances is a composition fellow) is to work on our opera, Salt. Salt is an adaptation of the biblical story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra. Set in the present day United States, the story explores the escalating tension between urban and rural and the consequences of all brands of fundamentalism. A scene from Salt will be presented…
Frances Pollock and Tia Price’s “Stinney: An American Execution” is a profound and moving opera that I am so excited to be co-producing with Frances and with Beth Morrison Projects. It will be presented at the Prototype Festival! The New York Times is excited, too! An involuntary symbol of sickening injustice, George Junius Stinney Jr. was executed at the age of 14. Having been wrongly accused and…