Sometime after 9-11, I lost all sense of patriotism.  It might have been the way people used the American flag to sell beer (not unlike Jesus Breathmints and granola bars).  Perhaps it was when I first heard a country singer telling me we should stick a boot in the ass of Afghanistan.  ''It's the American Way.''  And I began to ...

I wrote this while I was at a PLC Conference last week. They charged fourteen bucks for internet access (the equivalent of twenty-four tacos at Jack in the Box) so I waited until now to post it: In every era of American history, there is an archetypal city that embodies the values of the age. Philadelphia, with its idealism, simple colonial brick ...

I'm listening to a soft, subdued version of ''Chicago,'' but Sufjan Stevens.  It's a life studio set taped on an indie station, KCRW, in Los Angeles.  Somehow, with the lone guitar and trumpet, I can hear the words echoing the sentiments of this school year.  At the beginning of the year, everything was going really ...

''Teachers are usually just lazy.  They get tons of vacation and don't even have to put in a full work day,'' remarks my brother's friend.  He's an arrogant fire-fighter; the type of lazy jock who never had to do work in school because he had a hell of an arm on the baseball field.  He breezed through college and by sheer nepotism ...