à la carte spirit by ilona fried
ilona fried
It’s Possible to Drown Out Marching Nazis. What About the Ones in Our Heads?
That 40,000 people marched peacefully in Boston on Saturday against hate groups, including Nazis, gave me hope that civilization would survive, at least for the weekend. While it’s important to starkly delineate what is, and what is not, acceptable in a modern democratic nation, it would be a foolish mistake to believe that everyone on … Continue reading
Sushi is My Sheet Cake. Too Bad Neither Are an Answer.
Thanks to gluten and sugar sensitivity, I would end up in the worst kind of food coma if I were to stuff my face with sheet cake per Tina Fey‘s Saturday Night Live skit. Still, I completely understand the impulse to use a grilled cheese sandwich to shovel cake and frosting into one’s mouth, an impulse … Continue reading
Why It’s OK, Even Imperative, to Laugh at the Tiki Torch Troglodytes
My late father, a survivor of Auschwitz, periodically told variations of the following joke when I was a kid: “Did you know that Jews and bicyclists caused World War II?” “Why the bicyclists?” I naively asked the first time. “Why the Jews?” After delivering the punchline, my dad chuckled. I either rolled my eyes, groaned … Continue reading
Of Moshe Feldenkrais and Mary Oliver
Originally posted on Vox Populi:
It is a silver morning like any other. I am at my desk. Then the phone rings, or someone raps at the door. I am deep in the machinery of my wits. Reluctantly I rise, I answer the phone or I open the door. And the thought which I had…
Repeat After Me: Introversion is Not a Communicable Disease
Imagine a world without the contributions of Emma Watson, J.K.Rowling, Audrey Hepburn, Rosa Parks, Meryl Streep, Bill Gates, Albert Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi, to name but a few introverts. Imagine, too, if the recently deceased Maryam Mirzhakani had been urged to emulate the American extroverted ideal by being an outgoing team player. Would she have become … Continue reading
à la carte spirit by ilona fried 
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