Ellen DeGeneres is … almost a litmus test of where we have been as a society. When she first came out and really put the issue of same-sex partnerships on people’s agendas, and I mean people who really wouldn’t have thought about it, I think the country was still in a very different state.NPR on how Ellen DeGeneres helped change cultural sentiment about LGBT rights.
I’m a Pisces. I love computers and hot tamales.
Dear Mom,
I don’t know why you’re “encouraging” me to finish my degree now, when it’s expensive and I can’t afford it, and not five years back, when it was cheaper and I was very much near completion and I wasn’t working. If you were completely paying for my last year, then fine, I’ll go ahead, but you’re not. Don’t try to lessen your guilt by “gently prodding” me back towards school. Unknown to you, I’m figuring a way I can get back to school. Without your help. So there.
Kind regards,
Your “smart”, “brilliant” son
How far, we must ask ourselves, is a book influenced by its writer’s life — how far is it safe to let the man interpret the writer? How far shall we resist or give way to the sympathies and antipathies that the man himself rouses in us — so sensitive are words, so receptive of the character of the author? These are questions that press upon us when we read lives and letters, and we must answer them for ourselves, for nothing can be more fatal than to be guided by the preferences of others in a matter so personal.
But also we can read such books with another aim, not to throw light on literature, not to become familiar with famous people, but to refresh and exercise our own creative powers.
