William Miles

For thirty-six years I kicked myself for blowing a chance to see my musical muse in concert. It was my summer break from college. I was backpacking solo in Europe and amassing emotional highs and lows. It was the kind of stuff my hero – the song-writer, poet, and bard Leonard Cohen – sang about. At least I liked to […]

This morning I learned that my chief – an African chief of a Muslim people – died.  And while some of my co-religionists may frown upon the idea, tonight I shall say Kaddish – the Jewish prayer for the dead – in his honor. For he was not only my chief – he was the very embodiment […]

CHERISHED MEMENTOS It is not my job as professor to make my students smile.  But with Hana, I couldn’t resist the challenge. And so I gave her an old phone card. Hana would keep to herself in the back. She befriended few in class. She also was very serious.   Serious in class debate. Serious in one-on-one chats. Serious even in the […]

Back in the New York City subways, after two years in Niger, blacks no longer looked the same.  Before the Peace Corps, straphangers of another color were invisible at best. Not that one made much eye contact with anybody, of any color, in the trains beneath Manhattan; but if there was one category of person […]