Meredith ap Robert

Tag: America

  • Americans are the frog in the pot: The Obama years, and what could have been

    It’s hard to believe that twenty years have come and gone since Barack Obama burst onto the national scene. It’s been twenty-one years, actually, since Obama’s speech at the 2004 DNC. This was the rousing speech that effectively introduced Barack Obama, “a skinny kid with a funny name,” and his audacious hope.

  • Thoughts from the 60th Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies

    Thoughts from the 60th Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies

    The 60th Annual International Conference on Medieval Studies. It all comes down to an awful lot of hurry to talk about some very old texts. But that’s America. An insistent drum whose beating makes you forget the pounding of your pulse, the rhythm of your breath, and cadence of the seasons.

  • Toronto Pearson, Terminal 3, the A Gates

    Toronto Pearson, Terminal 3, the A Gates

    In an airport that welcomes 50 million people every year, I’ve found a quiet corner. Tables empty. Outlets free. Plenty of seats at the bar. Just workless workers and captains of industry, keeping one another company in a world that’s waiting, between resignation and rebellion, for whatever’s next.

  • America, and the joy of missing out

    America, and the joy of missing out

    This Sunday was something quite special for me: the first time in my adult life that I was completely unaware that the Super Bowl was happening. Social media ruined it for me in the end—but what joy, what bliss to be ignorant of American goings-on for just a heartbeat. 

  • We Were Supposed to Be a City on a Hill

    We Were Supposed to Be a City on a Hill

    In 1630, Puritan lawyer and governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony John Winthrop uttered the words that have come to represent the audacity of America’s founding enterprise: “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people will be upon us.”  Three hundred and fifty years…