How To Have Fun
Mev taught me something very important: She taught me that when you go to Ted Drewes you could mix all different kinds of frozen custard flavors together. I would never have dreamed of some of…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
Your Name Came Up (Daydream/3)
I smelled like smoke Which is unusual for me But I humored him Though it wasn’t funny To think of him dying From the deliberate wreckage of his lungs I hadn’t seen him in ages…
Classroom
It was back in 1982 We had a guest in our theology and lit class Ten years older than me He’d come of age in the Sixties Allen Ginsberg had recently been in town Our…
Western Civilization
The uprising of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto began in the spring of 1943 and lasted about twenty days. Of the thousands of Jews still in the ghetto when the uprising began perhaps a…
Israel’s Checklist for Palestinians to Reach a Settlement
Dear Bella Levenshteyn If you read the US press The following will strike you As conventional wisdom Perry Destroy your rockets. Quit whining. No more stone-throwing. Enough already of this “we’re the victim” routine. Forget…
Share the Wealth with Suzanne Renard: Portals to Humanity–The Joys of Multi-lingualism
One of the most common companion images attached to the word “language,” other than “foreign,” is “barrier.” Playing to the myth of national unity, American culture in many ways discourages the learning of languages other…
Yeshua
A couple friends and I are reading books on Jesus this year. Our first is Thich Nhat Hanh’s Living Buddha, Living Christ. We may also read the Jewish Gnostic/literary scholar Harold Bloom, who has this…
Julia
Julia Brucks is indefatigable, inspirational, passionate, perspicacious, witty and brilliant. An awesome Share the Weatlh!
So You Want To Be a Writer by Charles Bukowski
if it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don’t do it….
A Writing and Reading Course with “Dear Layla”
In this winter/spring course, we will read (or reread) and write on themes from my recent book, Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine. Precedent for this method: last spring we used themes from The Book of…