Mikel Bulgakov’s Russian masterpiece “Master and Margarita” follows the Devil, Woland, and his minions as they descend upon Moscow to terrorize, destroy, and uproot society. However, despite his unsettling violence, Woland ultimately serves as a force of good and truth for the Russian people. Bulgakov uses Woland to uproot truths about the corrupt, oppressive reality...
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“Do you have faith?” We were sitting in a cafe for lunch today, talking about the world and our place in it. A generation apart, she came to Washington a few years ago, and works on international human rights questions, hard questions that they are. This question mattered to her too. I looked back across...
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When I was a boy, my grandfather and I spent summers buying cattle throughout Colorado. Mostly of course, he was the buyer, but there were moments when, with a certain twinkle in his eye, he would let me be the bidder, nudging me to know when to move my hand so that the auctioneer knew...
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Erleichda. It translates as “Lighten up.” Of course, it’s actually a made-up word, from a fictional language, which only exists in the world of Tom Robbins’ Jitterbug Perfume. I’ve never read Jitterbug Perfume. But my mother had. And for some reason, that pretend word resounded with her. And for some reason, that pretend word came...
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Reading a mystery? For class? Seriously? This is the second week for the Capital Fellows, the graduate seminar I teach every Monday morning through the fall, September to December, and the first book I had them read was Dorothy Sayers’ Whose Body? one of the wonderfully complex stories of Lord Peter Wimsey, the very amazing...
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Almost as pretty as it gets…. and yet. Telluride is also a place like every place. The sun rises, the day unfolds, the evening comes. People work and worship, they play outdoors and cry indoors, they eat and drink, they play music and watch movies. In and through it all, like every one of us,...
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