Alas, poor country! [it cannot be call’d our mother but our grave]

Kyiv after dark [#3]

Kyiv after dark [#2]

Kiyv after dark [#1]

The New Yorker [April 4, 2022]

I had not bought a paper issue of The New Yorker from a newstand for ages, possibly decades, so I jumped on the opportunity on my way back from Rutgers! This April 4 issue contained several impressive articles, which I read over the following weeks. (As I discovered during the lockdown, one issue a week is too much material, even during lockdown!) The most moving one is about Mackenzie Fierceton, a brilliant Penn University graduate, who escaped familial abuse to purse  sociology studies at Penn, to the point of receiving a most notorious Rhodes scholarship in 2021 to start a PhD in social policy at the University of Oxford. Only for the scholarship to be rescinded by the Rhodes Trust, after action from Penn. While I cannot judge of the facts and arguments based on this sole article (which 12 pages are definitely impressive in their detail and careful depictions of the whole story), the corporate-damage-control attitude of Penn in this affair is appalling.  And revealing of a awfully biased perception of abuse and psychological damage being limited to low-income classes. All the best to this student, in the pursuit of her studies and ideals.