Paul Robeson

A couple days ago, there was a piece on the radio about Paul Robeson, the performer, activist, and lawyer. I was planning to write at length about his life -- and this stately mural, which is located a couple blocks from my apartment -- but I decided that was a little too easy. In fact, the only non-nice thing anyone can say about Robeson is that he wasn't quick enough to criticize Stalin, and I find that kind of post-Cold War anti-communism a little suspect. Necessary, perhaps, but still suspect, even if Robeson singing the Soviet national anthem does make me cringe.

One thing I learned about Robeson from the radio program is that the US government revoked his passport because he refused to swear that he was not a communist -- hence, I suppose, the mural's claim that Robeson was a "Citizen of the World." Call me nostalgic and insufficiently anti-communist, but if the spirit of an age is reflected in its singer-activists, I'd much rather live in Robeson's time than Bono's.

Good

I could say all sorts of mean things about Good magazine's list of the top magazines of all time, but that would be silly and, well, mean -- and thus contrary to the generous spirit of this blog. Instead, allow me to congratulate them on having devised a much-del.icio.used feature, and thank them for having inspired me to come up with a magazine list of my own.

Mine is much shorter, since I limited myself to magazines to which I have subscribed, or which I bought (or continue to buy) consistently on newsstands. Since this is a great opportunity to write nice things about periodicals I love, I plan to post about these magazines from time to time.

Dudes among dudes

I've grown fond of most of the guys I play hockey with, but two deserve special mention: JL and PH.

- On a Penn roller hockey team filled with future (and present) physicians and nanotube-obsessed engineering students, JL stands out nearly as much as I do. Recently he tried to bring up dialectics as part of the locker room conversation, and I was the only one who knew what he was talking about. He lives in a bizarre condo development in New Jersey.

- My ice hockey team is remarkably diverse, at least by the standards of the sport, which often seems to be the exclusive province of boorish, middle-class white men. Our squad boasts women, senior citizens, accountants, and honest-to-God POCs (myself not really included). But the most unlikely team member of all is PH, a Russian history professor at Penn, whose father translated Mikhail Bakhtin's major works into English. I sometimes wonder whether PH is a better player than the 'sphere's most famous hockey-playing academic, and given that he's scored three goals in the last two games, I'm inclined to say yes.