Word of the Day
Disponibilidade, noun, Portuguese A disposition of openness In which one is accessible Available and willing To be inconvenienced By the needs or requests Of another person or event –adapted from Mev Puleo, The Struggle Is…
Month: November 2014
Poems Overheard Last Night
1. Who needs Rumi? We’ve got Fatima! She’s the ultimate poem. 2. If Rumi had met Fatima He would have forgotten Shams– Just like that!
Comfort the Afflicted, Afflict the Comfortable
At this stage, we have an obligation to make those who shield Israel from criticism feel uncomfortable—not because they are Jewish, but because they are complicit in the commission of crimes against a vulnerable people…
Share the Wealth with Hope Menninger: An Exercise in Compassion
From Hope …One of my favorite songs is “What Sarah Said” by a band named Death Cab for Cutie. Sarah’s punchline appears near the end of the song: “love is watching someone die.” After my…
Together
“So her mother died from a brain tumor? Sure, I can spend some time with her” “You’re spending too much time on Netflix? Let’s read Mansfield Park, 30 minutes a night, whaddaya say?” “Your friend…
Gratitude/998
Since she took my class in 2007 She’s read The Book of Mev six times It’s an annual ritual It’s reading as rejuvenation To instill urgency To her flagging spirit
They Whispered So So Softly
We were on our honeymoon in Sicily Visiting with friends from graduate school They were both Sicilian-Americans They had moved there to start a family They had us out to their home in the country…
Fidel on Che
He had a gift for people. He was one of those people that everyone immediately cares about—it was his naturalness, his simplicity, his sense of comradeship and all his virtues. He was a doctor; he…
Facing the Facts
My life is mapped out: it is my destiny to take a bullet by the Mafia some day. The only thing I don’t know is when. —Giovanni Falcone See how the accusations against the…
Books Can Be Subversive
Somoza’s guards burned the 10,000 volumes of the Solentiname library –from Prophets in Combat: The Nicaraguan Journal of Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga [1986]