à la carte spirit by ilona fried
Holocaust
Why We Need True Diplomacy, and Feldenkrais, More than Ever
When I learned that George Kent, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, would be testifying in front of Congress as part of the impeachment inquiry, I thought: Thank God. I met him during the 1991-1992 academic year when were both students at The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in … Continue reading
We Are All Skeletons
One day, a day I am unlikely to live to see, humans will no longer care about race. Identity politics will have been relegated to the dustbin of history. Perhaps even identity as we’ve come to emphasize it – based on religion, sexuality, etc. – will be a relic of the past. One of the … Continue reading
Unexpected Reflections for 9/11
I was at work when planes flew into the World Trade Center in New York and another into the Pentagon. Someone plugged in a small television and we watched the unspeakable unfold. Even the office manager, a normally stoic man with a love of beer, began to cry. He dismissed us for the day. I … Continue reading
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
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
à la carte spirit by ilona fried 
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