Category Archives: editorial

Observations

By shelley | Published: 17 Apr 06
The walls are a splotchy yellow. They feel unfinished, hastily painted maybe, but inviting in a way. They host a patchwork of paintings. Some rest in heavy, ornate gold frames; some have naked canvas edges. It is a roughly even mix of skillfully and amateurishly executed art, not one likely designed to be hung adjacent […]
Also posted in creative, journalism | Leave a comment

Bad Examples From Hollywood

By shelley | Published: 9 Mar 04
Hollywood talks itself up as this great self-aware role-model machine. Myriad famous people are always quipping about being aware of how much influence they wield and trying to set a good example. I’ve noticed, though, that Hollywood is good at perpetuating stereotypes when no one’s looking. I work in the video rental industry so I […]
Also posted in essay | Leave a comment

It’s in the Wording

By shelley | Published: 17 Feb 04
Recently I’ve begun noticing that sexism isn’t just in the way we act, but in how we make use of our language. There are several examples of phrases that I have come across lately that illustrate our culture’s views of the sexes and the roles proscribed to each. These constructs of language serve primarily to […]
Also posted in essay | Leave a comment

Radical Notions

By shelley | Published: 16 May 02
I’m sure it’s rather obvious, but I’ll go ahead and say it anyway. I’m a feminist. Wait, where are you going? That’s not as bad a word as it seems. No, really, come back, I won’t bite (hard). Good, now let me start over. I’m a feminist. I believe in the equality of women and […]
Also posted in essay | Leave a comment

Fence Sitting: Religious or Spiritual Education?

By shelley | Published: 26 Feb 02
For every debate, it seems there’s always someone stuck in the middle, someone who just can’t separate the issues into one black and one white side. When it comes to taking sides between Svi Shapiro and James Moffett, that person is yours truly – to a certain degree, anyway. Shapiro, in his essay A Parent’s […]
Also posted in essay | Leave a comment

A Parent’s Dilemma: Public vs. Jewish Education

By shelley | Published: 12 Feb 02
The time had come far too soon for the author to decide between public education and Jewish education for his daughter. There is always the danger of one person’s individuality being lost in the grand scale of “moral, ideological, and political considerations,” but a parent cannot ignore the needs of the child just for the […]
Also posted in essay | Leave a comment

Censorship and a Spiritual Education

By shelley | Published: 8 Feb 02
Morality and religion, which “function through human institutions,” are inherently culturally biased and focus largely on a particular group of people. Spirituality is a connection to the whole, rather than just to one group, and an education in such can achieve generally the same goals as religious teachings, although with more emphasis on plurality than […]
Also posted in essay | Leave a comment

Opportunity Masking Reality

By shelley | Published: 4 Oct 00
It seems to me that every generation has to have something or another to complain about. Generally speaking, each will gripe about all of the other generations at least once, if not much more frequently. Our parents’ generation talks about everything that our generation is lacking, and our grandparents’ generation is equally negative in regards […]
Also posted in essay | Leave a comment

On Noam Chomsky

By shelley | Published: 22 May 00
The other day I saw the words CHOMSKY KNOWS scratched into the wall of a toilet stall. This is how word of Noam Chomsky tends to spread: you hear the guy, your life changes and you share the news however you can. (7, 1) While sitting in a café, I saw a young woman walk […]
Also posted in essay | Leave a comment