Author / Dan Sicorsky
-
![]()
Studying The Good Life
It has come my time to go, but where to? what to do? who to be? how? To graduate is to sink deep into existentialism. I had only to take five credits this semester to graduate, but I instead enrolled in eighteen: my heaviest load yet. I had a question—a jabbing thought—that I wanted to…
-
![]()
Where We Come From, Where We Go
The young man leaned his head against the window of the train taking him away. He let out a relaxed sigh, and smiled faintly. The demeanor was not to be expected of someone leaving a place that was good to him, never to return. His next city, Chicago, will be the tenth since he left…
-
![]()
Aching on the Periphery of Pain
You and I are alive and thus we have not died. But have you ever been in pain? ♦ I was chatting with a friend by the bleachers when the shooting began at the high school athletic field where I recently found myself during a dream. The concrete area was spacious, but it was fenced…
-
![]()
The (Mis)construction of Knowledge
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in two rulings nearly 15 years ago that sex offenders’ rate of re-offense, at almost 80 percent, is “frightening and high.” Since then, his “statistic” has been used by hundreds of lower courts and lawyers to defend policies that banish offenders from most communities. The severity of the punishment would be…
-
![]()
We’re Not Ready for a Borderless World
A balding yet bearded white man, large and tall with jeans tight around his belly, would visit my grade school once a year or so and bring a long, blank banner. Without the help of even an index card, he would outline with a Sharpie every corner, boundary, and detail of land and sea, every…
-
![]()
Want to Have an Effective Protest? Disrupt, Expert Says
Douglas McAdam knows a thing or two about protests. After partaking in them as a student during the height of the Vietnam anti-war movement in the 1960s, he went on to complete a Ph.D. in sociology. He’s now a distinguished professor at Stanford who’s written 18 books and 85 articles on social movements and contentious…
-
![]()
The Real Danger in Our Cities
Costco has long had a place near and dear to my heart. Every Friday after school from the first through seventh grades, I’d hold my dad’s hand as we meandered through the varied sections of our North Miami branch. At the start of each new aisle, I’d sample (and resample) potato chips, chocolate, turkey, Club…
