“You don’t know what you don’t know.” Elizabeth House was told this once while working in a facility where the residents were struggling with different areas of addiction. She learned in that experience, and many…
Yaele DiPlacido-Eastman questioned my title, which includes the trigger word–for someone who grew up in the Soviet Union–”comrades.” My choice of title stems not from apparatchiks of Stalinist oppression but from one of America’s greatest…
[A Beggar in Jerusalem] is neither novel nor anti-novel, neither fiction nor autobiography, neither poem nor prose—it is all this together. — Elie Wiesel My idea of the ideal text is still the Talmud. I…
Chris Hedges and Laila al-Arian, Collateral Damage: America’s War against Iraqi Civilians Campbell: But you have this: I remember my unit was coming along this elevated overpass. And this kid is in the trash pile below, pulls…
My friend Lea Koesterer suggested her friend Lois for one of our evenings, so I am glad to pass along the following from Lea– Lois Aceto, a Racine Dominican Sister, is a seasoned social justice activist. Her…
This page is part of a book-in-progress, Dear Love of Comrades, which you can read here.
October 12, 2002 This book is crucial to my work. Amira Hass is an Israeli journalist and child of Holocaust survivors trying to report accurately what has been transpiring in Gaza since the famous handshake….
Roy Morris, Jr., The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War This book tells the story of Walt’s practice of the 4th Tiep Hien precept, not to look away from suffering. Actually, here’s the…
Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: Finding Balance in a Hurried World This book reminds me of something Thomas Merton believed: “The spiritual life is simple, but not easy.” Even though many people in the U.S….