I am an architect. I spent my career designing spaces to enhance human life. Healthcare facilities. Affordable housing. I also did my share of high-end residential work, so I’m keen to the indulgent hubris of the rich. A few years ago, I was invited to speak to a conference of…

You gotta love Steven Pinker. He puts such high polish on the gruesome aspects of our world; he makes me believe there’s hope. For those of us who may not be familiar, Steven Pinker is a psychology professor at Harvard whose research focuses on language, cognition, and social relations. He’s…

The first time I ate at a restaurant that delivered me a check with a surcharge tacked on to support the kitchen staff, I was miffed. Another hidden cost. The meal was over, the tab delivered, I wasn’t of a mind to make a scene, so I paid and left…

I’m not talking about the N-word or the B-word or the C-word, or even the F-word; though there are damned few times when uttering any of those syllables actually help a situation. I’m talking about that personally pernicious word that simultaneously lets you off the hook even as it dumps…

I recently caught an afternoon matinee of Speakeasy Stage’s production of Fairview, one of the oddest, yet unsettling, pieces of theater I’ve seen in some time. The longish one act divides into three discrete segments. The first half hour or so depicts a middle-class Black family: mother, father, daughter, and…

Ever since he entered hospice care a few weeks ago, at age 97, reminiscences and accolades of Jimmy Carter have fluttered across the cyber-sphere. They triggered my own memories of the peanut farmer turned President turned humanitarian: the only President with whom I have any personal experience. I first saw…

Guest Post by Michael ‘’Skylar’’ Theroux; she/her/her; MTheroux@MWCC.edu Mike Theroux and I have been Black & Pink Masschusetts pen pals for the past two years. Mike is currently serving a sentence at NCCI Gardner; her parole hearing is this Friday, April 14, 2023. She sent me this message of hope…

Taking a bit of time to reenergize my thoughts. The Awkward Poser will be back, refreshed. In the meantime, all the best to my readers.

The data is pretty clear. Human life on this planet, as we know it, is on its descent. Ten thousand years after we harnessed the extractive possibilities of agriculture, we are racing through the planet’s resources — and heating it up in the process — at such a rate that…