This Pilgrimage of the Heart
I first read the seven volumes of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time spring through autumn of 1997. A couple of years later, I read the collection of Proust’s essays in On Art &…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
Share the Wealth with Joanie French: An Introduction to Feldenkrais
Dear Friends, This week’s Share the Wealth is an Open House with my partner Joanie French and her colleagues. Please come for part or all of this gathering. Mark Feldenkrais…The means to know and appreciate…
Share the Wealth with Linsey Stevens: Collage is a Simile for Life, And Other Reasons for My Medium of Choice
When I started collaging last year, I stumbled into an activity that is—by all definitions—my happy medium. While I also enjoy pen and ink sketching, I’ve found collaging to be endlessly entertaining, mentally stimulating, and…
A U.S. American Voice, Laotian Voices
Fred Branfman, Voices from the Plain of Jars: Life under an Air War (first published in 1972) If our country had decency, at the death of Fred Branfman there would have been coverage, interviews, retrospectives,…
Remembrance, Responsibility, Reparations
Ariel S. Garfinkel, Scofflaw: International Law and America’s Deadly Weapons in Vietnam With the recent passing of Senator John McCain, it’s clear how hard it is for many Americans see what we’ve done in the world….
Share the Wealth with Dianne Lee and Bill Quick: Postcards to Voters
This coming Sunday, please join Dianne and Bill in writing friendly, handwritten reminders to voters encouraging them to vote November 9th. In an age of digital overload, old-fashioned mail makes a lot of sense. Younger…
The Ideal Text
“My idea of the ideal text is still the Talmud. I love the idea of parallel texts, with long, discursive footnotes and marginal commentary, texts commenting on texts.” –Noam Chomsky, Mother Jones, 1987
For Friends in NYC: Norman Finkelstein Lectures
Check out Norman Finkelstein at the Brooklyn Central Library for his lecture series, “Bracing for the Revolution: Landmark Documents and Speeches in American History”: Bracing for the Revolution is a free ten-week class offered as part…
“Nobody’s Going To Do It for You”
Anne Waldman and Laura Wright, editors, Beats at Naropa: An Anthology Coffee House Press, 2009 I read Beats at Naropa exactly nine years ago, 2009. In my notes on the dialogues, essays, and interviews are…
In Gratitude for Serge Klarsfeld by Hedy Epstein
I attended the 1983 Gathering of Holocaust Survivors in Washington, D.C., where I received a message from my Father, 43 years after he gave it to a fellow concentration camp prisoner in Camp les Milles…