After Midnight by Heather Shayne Blakeslee At a time of year when we hope to reflect on what is most important to us in our families, communities and within ourselves, we’re being confronted with just how wrong things can go when we aren’t vigilant about our values every day of the year. After a
MoreFact Check by Heather Shayne Blakeslee As we approach an historic American election that is high on drama and high on anxiety, many of us have become addicted to watching the polls and devouring the accompanying analysis. Nate Silver’s servers at FiveThirtyEight have been working overtime for months, as have our nervous systems and bartenders.
MoreA Truly Civil War by Heather Shayne Blakeslee In 1849, in the run up to the Civil War, Henry David Thoreau wrote in his essay “Civil Disobedience” that “All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are
MoreThe Ice Cream Man by Heather Shayne Blakeslee It’s hard not to feel as though the entire country has gone crazy. The barrage of violence at home and abroad and the continued struggle for civil rights has everyone on edge. The feeling that the truth is on permanent vacation has added to the Orwellian overtones
MoreThe Halo Effect by Heather Shayne Blakeslee When I was 6 or 7, I thought that Jesus was born in Pennsylvania. My reasoning was this: Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Bethlehem is a city in Pennsylvania, therefore Jesus was born in Pennsylvania. It’s an argument form that seems so solid and obvious that logicians have
MoreBlack and White by Heather Shayne Blakeslee Forget the Lafayette vs. Lehigh football rivalry, a Pennsylvania matchup that began in 1884. The longest running rivalry in college sports is progressive students and faculty lining up against conservative university administrations—and socially conservative thought in general. Among other causes in the ’60s, it was the Vietnam War,
MoreAwakening by Heather Shayne Blakeslee Out in the woods of Fairmount Park and across the eastern woodlands, spring ephemerals, those short-lived native flowers—twinleaf and columbine, bloodroot and trout lily—have been blooming. They come up on their own to announce the coming of spring to the few souls who might seek them out, and then go
MoreThrowing It All Away by Heather Shayne Blakeslee American women do 10 more hours of housework per week than their male partners—more than a full workday. Marketers, smartly, continue to target women with messages about convenience and saving time. My sister, a chemical engineer and mother of three, is fully aware of this dynamic. She
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The Smog of War by Heather Shayne Blakeslee In Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 2013, a giant digital television was broadcasting pictures of a blue sky and white clouds: The toxic smog over the city prevented people from seeing the actual sky. For years, some weather forecasters said the opaque skies were caused by “fog,” without
MoreEnough is Enough by Heather Shayne Blakeslee I very briefly nannied for a couple on the upper West Side of Manhattan—let’s call them Sarah and John. I once listened to them argue in front of me, in French, over the welfare of a child’s hat that had been purchased in Paris. It was maybe eight
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