Last Thursday, the Girl and I watched an acquaintance celebrate the release of his debut book of poetry. Several poets read their work. Or, rather, they performed it and the room, filled with beauteous diverse shades of black, swayed in motion to the words, some of us recoiling when we'd been hit with a particularly powerful line or stricken with ( Read more... )

"I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel - a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept." -- Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, in a letter to Sir Horace Mann

Get you a man who can do both.

YEAR-IN-REVIEW ROUNDUP

The 2015 Highlight Reel, Italics Edition

Oh boy. Here goes.

January: T ruminates on some of the difficult things he will have to do while home, finds solace in books, then, as he attempts to rebuild a bridge burnt, returns to Paris after its first terrorist attack of the year.

February: T frackin' loves the BSG pilot, ( Read more... )

Dinner with a girl on Sunday evening morphed into a bit of an existential boon when we came across a trio of black women attorneys next to us at the bar. Working in corporate law and government, they carry a bit of the unicorn in them, given that our profession on the whole is about 2% black. (An emphasizing point: the year I summer'd with a ( Read more... )

-- How Ta-Nehisi Coates's letter to his son about being black in America became a bestseller - Tim Adams, The Guardian, Sept. 20, 2015 ( Read more... )

-- Great and Greatest: How Venus Williams Helped Create Serena - Louisa Thomas, Grantland, Sept. 9, 2015 ( Read more... )

-- Unpaid internships 'should be banned to build diversity in publishing' - Alison Flood, The Guardian, Jul. 9, 2015 ( Read more... )

-- Farewell to America - Gary Younge, The Guardian, Jul. 1, 2015 ( Read more... )

-- Writing While Muslim: The Freedom to Be Offended - Rafia Zakaria, Los Angeles Review of Books, May 8, 2015 ( Read more... )

-- Is Paris Still a Haven for Black Americans? - Thomas Chatterton Williams, Smithsonian Magazine, Apr. 23, 2015 ( Read more... )