Denaturalizing the Natural

a purple cartoon dinosaurAs a little kid in the early 1960s, I guess I decided that the hooded sweaters I sometimes wore made me look like Dino the dinosaur — you know, from “The Flintstones”? I don’t think we had a specific name for them yet — at least we didn’t call them “hoodies,” as people do now. Instead, opting for brutal descriptivism (which sounds like a 1960s architectural movement), I’m guessing that we just uncreatively called them “hooded sweaters.” Continue reading “Denaturalizing the Natural”

We Are the World

mlkmemorialIn the U.S. today is Martin Luther King Day, a federal holiday established in 1986 to commemorate the life and achievements of the noted civil rights leader who was tragically assassinated outside his motel room in Memphis in 1968.

His daughter, Bernice King, who is the executive director of the Atlanta-based King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, has been widely quoted as recently saying the following to the Reuters news service: Continue reading “We Are the World”