For a while now, I’ve been fascinated by the work of Claire McManus, an acupuncturist whose patients have included dogs, bongos and warthogs. I spent an afternoon with her at the New England Aquarium’s Rescue and Rehabilitation center to watch her treat sea turtles. In the Sept/Oct 2014 issue, Orion Magazine published my story about…
I recently identified a new genre of movie, the Parent-Child Romantic Comedy, and an analysis of these films helped me understand something about being a parent. My essay was published on the New York Times Motherlode blog here: http://nyti.ms/1wwP0qi Second favorite reaction to my essay: “That was yours? I saw that in a friend’s Facebook status.”…
The Boston Globe Connections column yesterday printed my essay on my experience away from the Internet, forced to actually connect with the other people in my presence to learn anything — and enjoying it. I coined a phrase to describe the collected brainpower in a room: the Roomnet. Earlier this year, an archaeological dig took…
While in Sudan earlier this year, a film crew from National Geographic came to El Kurru to document our work and interview the dig director, Geoff Emberling. The fruits of their labor aired on PBS on October 1 as “Rise of the Black Pharaohs.” Here’s the PBS description: About the ProgramThe Egypt of the Great…
In January, the Boston Globe Magazine published an essay I wrote about my friendship with Mahmoud, a Sudanese archaeologist, and a greeting I had never seen before, the Sudanese Hug. The basic gesture is a right handed pat on another person’s left shoulder while they do the same to you. The Sudanese Hug is more…
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.
Jack Cheng, PhD 