Author Archives: Michael Pomeranz

“Lazy Susan’s Café. Coffee Pastries Sandwiches.” So reads the sign at 214 State St. That beige, brick, three-floor walk-up stands kitty corner to the Knights of Columbus building. Its second- and third-floor windows are obscured by a cast-iron fire escape. Lazy Susan’s Café occupies the first floor. In the big front window, blocking the view »

It’s taken me five months, but now I can admit it: I love the new Bass Library. Everyone does. The place is always packed. You walk in and find a trendy café waiting for you, with all of your friends there somehow. Each has her iPod and his organic coffee. Each has a book on »

I have a great life. I live in a beautiful, new college in an impressive, old campus. I take classes on interesting things. Occasionally, I read the great books assigned for those classes. Of course, my loyal reader (hi, Mom!) already knows all this, because I am a staff columnist for the Oldest College Daily. »

We learned yesterday morning of the death of William F. Buckley, Jr., one of the leading American intellectuals of the last half-century. Yet, he was far more than just another pundit and columnist. He saw it as his civic duty to ask the difficult questions, bringing controversial issues before the public eye. And he was »

“As we meet today, Chinese citizens who had the courage to speak their minds on the Internet are in the Chinese gulag because Yahoo! chose to reveal their identities to the Chinese government,” Congressman Tom Lantos said. “My message to this company today is simple: Your abhorrent activities in China are a disgrace. I simply »

Most of our parents love us very much; as we grew up, they taught us we were the most important things in the world, unique and special. Further, common understanding of the world tells us all people are created equally. So when two disagree, we are loathe to call one perspective better. To privilege one »

During winter break, I spoke with Eli Moyal, the mayor of Sderot, a poor city in the south of Israel. We met in City Hall. The day before, a missile struck ten meters away. In the past six years, thousands of missiles have hit Sderot. Due to the constant rain of missiles, every child in »

Yalies have available surprisingly few fora for talking about Yale. Perhaps our physical proximity to one another renders unnecessary institutionalized discussion: When I encounter someone on College Street while walking towards SSS from LC, we’ll talk for a few minutes about Yale’s latest deal with China. But our alternatives are few. The Yale Political Union »

Fifty-one weeks a year, Yalies are sociable, interesting, beneficent people, consistently sober and eternally interesting, happy about their residential colleges and busy inventing the next pizza, Frisbee or forward pass. So the tour guides tell me. But today, the Monday before The Game, things change. Nevermind that it is also Veterans Day. Today, enterprising students »

Yale cheers with the words of Aristophanes’ comedy The Frogs. Another reason to study your Greek, or so Imre Szalai’s ’96 Latin teacher told him. “When I first came to Yale, I was surprised that no one really knew about the cheer,” Szalai told me. “Then, sometime late in my spring semester, I was visiting »

Dear Professor E., I thought of you during Parents’ Weekend, and not just because my visiting folks kept me from studying. You taught me to look at today’s world with an eye toward history, and so I thought of you as I walked my parents around the pseudo-Gothic courtyards of Branford and Saybrook meant to »

Last week I had to write two papers, to sit an exam and to atone. Saturday was Yom Kippur. This likely did not escape your notice, because Yale groups are very good about rescheduling auditions, rush meals, executive meetings and everything else devouring our time around what is meant to be the Sabbath of Sabbaths. »