My wife thought Smart People by Lydia Diamond was going to be one of those plays where four people sit around and talk. According to the ads, they would be talking about privilege and ambition and race. She was right for about 5 minutes. The opening four person dinner party ended mid-scene. Then we were…
I discovered a cool online magazine called The Weeklings. They publish one essay a day about culture, from music to movies and comics, to someone’s random musings on the Syrian Civil War. Last Thursday, those random musings were mine: I’ve been thinking a lot about the Arab man who held a sharp razor to my…
Commentators are discussing the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. On June 4, 1989, Chinese army troops rolled into the center of Beijing to destroy the nascent democracy movement there. For those unfamiliar with the geography of Beijing, it would be the equivalent of tanks on Washington’s National Mall. I remember the June 4…
The New York Times decided to follow up on my essay about Greater Boston* by commissioning an interactive map of baseball fandom based on Facebook Likes correlated with zip code. The authors write about it here. The interactive map is here. A second map based on the same data showing the second favorite team is…
Here’s my essay from Cognoscenti, February 6, 2014 Author Anita Diamant recently wrote in Cognoscenti about how, even though she lives in Newton, she was proud and happy to welcome Boston’s new mayor into office. And the trolls descended! How dare a Newton resident call herself a Bostonian?, the commenters cried. Typical. Read the rest here.
An article I wrote in April 2012 about Pete Seeger was published in the Newton Tab in the weeks leading up to a Newton Family Singers Seeger-themed concert. It’s no longer on the Tab website, and it seems appropriate to repost it here. Reading it over, the article reads a bit like an obituary. Rest…
A week or so ago, the Boston Globe Magazine published an essay I wrote about the “Sudanese Hug,” a greeting I learned while visiting that nation. There was a great response to the piece and I felt like I’ve been learning on the fly how to navigate social media (especially Twitter) as a freelance writer…
Brain, Child Magazine originally published my essay on hugging my tween son (why he needs it and how I screwed it up), and now, through a partnership, the essay has been reprinted in the Huffington Post HuffPost Parents section here. Nice to see the story continues to resonate with readers.
What’s more than a handshake and less than a hug? The Sudanese have the answer. From the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine (1/12/14): Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you the Sudanese hug. While working on an archeological excavation in northern Sudan, I was fascinated by a form of greeting I had never seen…
Dear Jack Chengs, I’m not currently looking for a software job in Southern California. Are you? If so, you may want to redirect that Monster job search listing to your own e-mail. Jack Cheng in the Midwest, please thank your friends for all the invitations to church potlucks. I will be unable to attend. Similarly…
Jack Cheng, PhD 