by Debra Morris For some time I've wanted to write about anger in politics, more specifically the conditions under which it is necessary. Necessary in the sense that there is no better response—one more appropriate, say, or more effective. As far as possible, I want to consider anger's necessity apart from the question whether it…
by Debra Morris Along with thousands of others that day, I emerged from the South Tower of the World Trade Center with a crippling fatigue in my knees. Of the walk down, in my case from the 61st floor, certain things stand out: the speed with which one can descend a flight of stairs and…
by Debra Morris Imagine flipping through a copy of the academic journal Sociology and Social Research. One article in particular—”Our Schizoid Culture”—catches your eye. The author is well-known: a professor of sociology, soon-to-be editor-in-chief of the American Sociological Review, and, in something of a blow to “two cultures” thinking, future poetry editor for the Humanist…
by Debra Morris “I remember when I really used to be into nostalgia.” —Demetri Martin And I remember when it began, about a year ago; when the artifacts of my past, most of them long gone, began to take on the shimmer of buried treasure. It's an odd sensation, to be struck by loss, to…
by Debra Morris In this part of the essay I'll draw out some possible consequences for the contemporary Democratic Party of a distinctive brand of partisanship exemplified, as I suggested in Part 1, by my grandmother, the woman known all my life as “Morris.” She is a true Texas type: the Yellow Dog Democrat. To…
by Debra Morris Until my grandmother—whose 100th birthday we celebrated this year—took up residence first with my parents and then at the care center where three of her sisters also spent their last years, she lived independently and, in many ways, unconventionally. (Whereas she is content to describe her long life as “good,” my grandmother…
by Debra Morris The 1953 French thriller Wages of Fear, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, would seem an odd pick for Family Movie Night. But there we sat, side-by-side one Saturday night, to watch a movie I had bought based on the cover photograph and some vague sense of its cinematic status, its reputation as the…