I’m wrapping up my covid chronicles with this18th and final installment. Maybe I’ll revisit the topic later, when these pandemic times truly feel behind us. But right now, almost three years in, covid is still here and people are still dying everyday. Most of the world, however, is getting on with it, the booster shots … Continue reading #18 – october 21: lingering covid
Category: writing
#13 — february 14: J. Hillis Miller, a remembrance
I found out from a Facebook post that famed literary critic J. Hillis Miller had died of Covid on Feb. 7 at age 92. Professor Miller was my dissertation advisor at UC Irvine, where I was in graduate school for most of the ‘90’s. By the time I’d enrolled in his seminar, he’d been a … Continue reading #13 — february 14: J. Hillis Miller, a remembrance
Welcome to Contrary Frog
Image credit: “Another "Neighbor” by Usonian is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 There's a Korean folktale about a young frog who never listens to his mother, always doing the opposite of what he's told. Then his mother falls ill and before she dies, knowing her son, she asks him to bury her by the river … Continue reading Welcome to Contrary Frog
Why a blog? Why now?
Back in 2004, when blogs were everywhere, some friends and I started a group blog that would take the conversations we were having about politics, culture, and academic life into a more public realm, in a medium that was faster than academic publishing, slower than the news. Instead of sound bites and "hot takes" (before … Continue reading Why a blog? Why now?
Contrary Frog 