For Friends in NYC
I think you might appreciate Intractable Woman–a few years ago, I read any book of Anna Politkovskaya I could find translated into English.
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
Falcone
Just finished watching the 2005 film, Excellent Cadavers, and reading John Follain’s book, Vendetta: The Mafia, Judge Falcone, and the Quest for Justice.
Making the World Bearable: A Reading/Writing Class on Diane di Prima—Fall 2018
Feeling a need to be inspired in these dismal times? Been burnt out with academic writing that doesn’t originate in your soul? Seeking a community of comrades to inspire, console, and rouse you? Wanting to…
Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself
“I was like a pauper who moistens his dry crust with fewer tears if he assures himself that at any moment a total stranger is perhaps going to leave him his entire fortune. We are…
Dear Monsanto
Journalist Hoang Phuong states in the conclusion of her eloquent address to Monsanto, “It is not and never has been a question of money, Monsanto. It is a question of justice. In denying Agent Orange…
Making It Be Spring with Everything
Burton Watson, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, Columbia University Press, 1996 Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know…
Aha!
This morning, while writing a letter to one of my favorite poets (who lives in Brooklyn), it dawned on me that I want my next writing/reading class to be on the work and life of…
Scholem on Buber
Today I was rereading Gershom Scholem’s From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memoirs of My Youth, and came across this criticism of Martin Buber: The laconic brevity of those rabbis, their absolute precision of expression, attracted me…
Not So Random Entries, Commonplace Moleskine/7
440. Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form. — Herman Melville 464. One of the most…
After Reading Brecht’s Galileo
We want heroes, role models, saints, exemplars Keep looking! Ramakrishna had his soft spot for the young lads, didn’t he? Howard Zinn had affairs Gandhi slept in his old age along side young Hindu relatives…