Bench press



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hooting at OWLs

A couple years ago, I audited an African-American literature class, taught by a virtuosic professor who wove music and art and American history into a syllabus that was symphonic in its complexity and power. His performance as the conductor of this score was life-changing, for me at least.  Among the homework assignments was to attend a retrospective of the African-American painter Kerry James Marshall. In the following class, he asked students for their response to the exhibit. One young woman said her experience was spoiled by the presence of “old white ladies.” The scorn with which she uttered this epithet took my breath away. For one thing, I was the only old white lady in the class—most of the other students were young people of color—so I felt like an intruder under a spotlight. Which in a sense I was.  I wasn’t offended. In fact, I almost savored this little taste of being the object of racial, ageist, sexist hatred. It was experiential education. I told a friend ...
Read more

Failing at stealing

I was in my first year at an elite East Coast women’s college in the late 1960s when I was introduced to shoplifting. It was near the end of the fall semester, and Pam, a fellow Californian who lived in my dorm, showed me the Christmas gifts she was bringing home to her family. I was amazed by her generosity—Pendleton shirts and cashmere sweaters. “I stole them at the mall,” she told me. She said she put them on under her clothes in the dressing room and simply walked out with them. I mentioned Pam’s stealing to my roommate, Chris. “Oh, I never buy anything,” Chris said. She showed me her “stealing cape,” which had pockets sewn into the lining for the express purpose of hiding merchandise.  When I asked Chris and Pam what made them steal, they both told me they felt the world owed them something, and stealing made them feel as if they’d gotten even. Pam was an African-American army brat who had had to change schools a lot but had been a cheerleader in her senior year of high sc...
Read more