“In March of 2017 as I write, many Americans like myself are bewildered by a ‘jester’ who has seized the ‘throne,’ and it remains to be seen how the leveling will fare under…

“This is a country made up of people like me, immigrants and refugees, who fled here because they believed in the promise of The Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Who upon reading…

“I try to keep in mind how I came into the world: struggling for air, and then crying. Covered in somebody else’s blood, slapped on the ass by a stranger, with nothing to…

“I would often be left under the watchful care of the young dog, by now an adult but still unbred, while my parents and grandparents busied themselves with their responsibilities. Still unable to…

“My sole original thought this spring is this: what’s with the god-awful pinstripe suits now being worn by every pol, pundit, and latter-day-Pétain in Washington, DC? I long for the mavens of ‘Queer…

“Giving up is not giving in: accepting our fate is not synonymous with jumping into the absurdly omnicidal mainstream. Just because we’re opossums on the roadway doesn’t mean we should play possum. Resistance…

“The American psychotherapist Sheldon Kopp has cautioned, ‘If you have a hero, look again; you have diminished yourself in some way.’ I would not go quite that far because I know my reverence…

“One of them, though, took my breath away. On duty at the clothes shop, where men’s shoes are urgently needed, a tall young woman with a slight accent started up a conversation. Introducing…

  “Once again, I was without heroes, and I was becoming quite cynical about the entire idea of heroism. As I became increasingly involved in civil rights work and in the anti-war movement,…

“There are times when words are the last things on my mind. These times are rare (and rarefied), as immersed as I have been, since the age of three, in language. But, on…