With a little help from my friends
If I were able to do this more, pretty much every single post would be about my friends. It's no accident that somehow the things I write about are, underneath, really about how we strive for these relationships despite all the obstacles. I don't want to write about how much I miss the community of people who held me together in Pelham and Amherst. It's one of the other critical aspects of my life where words fail. I have been working hard on finding local friends. I'm doing okay at it. Not great, mind you, but okay. The cultural divide is sometimes uncrossable, the geography of suburbia unforgiving, and the weirdness of academia infuriating. The other day I compared it to how my African American students feel when they are in the minority in class and everyone expects them to "speak" for the black experience. As. if. there. were. just. one. Through all this, I am unaccountably blessed (and I almost never use that word) with a far-flung network of...