by Matthew Friedman | Aug 14, 2019 | Commentary, Politics
O ye wha are sae guid yoursel’, Sae pious and sae holy, Ye’ve nought to do but mark and tell Your neibours’ fauts and folly! – Robert Burns *** There are few things so rank as self-righteous ignorance, and Scott Gilmore’s op-ed article in...
by Matthew Friedman | Aug 7, 2019 | Commentary
Toni Morrison has died. This is inexpressibly sad news, though perhaps not entirely unexpected. The Nobel laureate, and author of Beloved, Song of Solomon, God Bless the Child, and so many other trenchant, deeply-felt commentaries on the human condition was 88 years...
by Matthew Friedman | Aug 5, 2019 | Books, Reviews
Tom Sleigh, The Land Between Two Rivers: Writing In an Age of Refugees. Graywolf Press, 2018. 272 pp. In his collection of essays, The Land Between Two Rivers: Writing in an Age of Refugees, Tom Sleigh recalls looking down with astonishment from an airplane window,...
by Matthew Friedman | Aug 4, 2019 | Commentary
I saw the headline on my phone’s home screen as we made our way to the Loop (Chicago’s downtown) for an early al-fresco dinner on the Riverwalk, and a concert at Harris Theater in Millennium Park. I read “Multiple Victims in El Paso Shooting,” and did not read...
by Matthew Friedman | Jul 31, 2019 | Essays, Photo Essay
On any given morning, there is a trail of fish parts and entrails leading along the Liberty State Park boardwalk on the western bank of the Hudson river. The New York City skyline glows in the Golden Hour light like a picture postcard. A fish head here – its eyes...
