Passing Through

Passing through, passing through. Sometimes happy, sometimes blue, glad that I ran into you. Tell the people that you saw me passing through. –– D. Blakeslee, 1948. One year ago I was finishing a blog article about the 2015 graduation. I had just come back from my time abroad and was glad about the chance

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Arts and Society in Berlin

The architects of the peculiar building at the end of a long, cobbled driveway on Eichenstrasse 43 would find it difficult to believe what has become of their creation. Originally intended as a tire manufacturing plant, the seemingly innocuous double-storey building has been subjected to a tumultuous history. Rumours of its past use for secret

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Open Rehearsal at BCB: Dover String Quartet

Last week at the Factory, BCB’s arts building, an attentive audience was allowed to have a small glimpse into the most private world of a creative process. The first four notes of Beethoven’s Op. 74, No. 10 in E flat major, played in reverberating harmony by two violins, a viola, and a cello, filled the

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The Budapest Diaries

Sunday, 8:00 pm, On our Way to Budapest The train is quiet save the steady rumble of any old-fashioned locomotive. The noise laps gently at my ears, rising and falling with the heave of pistons. Night has laid its thick blanket over the window, replacing cityscape and countryside with the eerily distorted reflection of compartment’s

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Perspectivalism Without Relativism

This post originally appeared on Public Seminar. Republished with their kind permission.  Earlier this month, Susan Henking, President of Shimer College (my alma mater), wrote for Public Seminar what she called “my educated hope for Shimer and for liberal education,” a hope “rooted in a criticism of the ways we have been commodified, [forced to] meet

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