This being the last day of Black History Month, a well-meant thing that’s nonetheless insulting and has probably run its course (though it did introduce me to Harriet Beecher Stowe and George Washington Carver back in grade school), I nonetheless have set for myself the completely unasked-for task of picking a song that might encapsulate [...]

Paint-flinging protesters went postal last night (or possibly early this morning) at the Deutsche Post on Ritterstraße. Actions like this have been happening all over Kreuzberg lately against perceived powers that be. I especially like the “vorsicht: frisch” signs warning about wet paint. Considerate!

Ryan Lizza’s full-on fellation of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in last week’s New Yorker is not journalism per se but it does offer a helpful history of the office, which I mistakenly thought always existed. I didn’t.
The office of chief of staff was created by Dwight Eisenhower, who redesigned the working structure of the [...]

“Blowing in the Wind” may still be Bob Dylan’s best known song to the world, a gentle anthem for free spirits that lived on long after Dylan left the hippies alone and refused to write any more “finger-pointing” songs. I only say that because it’s the one song you’ll hear from any Berlin guitar picker [...]

That’s a funny German word because the English is the reversed version, standstill. Or, if you will, cessation, stalemate, stagnation, stasis or idleness, among others, all of which characterize what is going on here. A good share of my seven siblings (43%), plus one boyfriend of a sibling, have been visiting me in Berlin since [...]