It’s About
As I offer to share a 250-page novel/collage (Dear Layla/Welcome to Palestine) With a friend here and there A typical question is– “What’s it about?” OK It’s about good mimesis It’s about memory, resistance and…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
The United States, Iran, and Ourselves … A presentation by Andrew Wimmer
Dear Friends, Please join us for a presentation by Andrew Wimmer on the political and cultural forces at work in the on-going U.S. fixation on Iran. We meet on Sunday 23 September from 6:00 to…
Writing To Wake Up Course
Writing to Wake Up: A Course in Creativity and Community Think about it: Even with all our technologies and modes of communication, who has enough time? And yet, we need time, as community activist Grace…
Arab Writers in Translation: Naguib Mahfouz in October
“You can’t understand Egypt without Mahfouz—without his characters, with whom every reader, Arab or not, can identify.” —Tahar Ben Jelloun For our next discussion of Arab Writers in Translation, we will consider the short novel…
Spiritual Exercises for September: Jean Durel
Friends, Jean Durel will be facilitate our September meeting of Spiritual Exercises on Monday 24 September from 7:00-8:00 p.m. at my home (4514 Chouteau Avenue, 63110). Jean will share her practice of pranayama (breathing), which…
On “Happiness” by Thích Nhất Hạnh
In her 1938 essay, Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf cautioned women to think critically about joining the professions men have created. She writes, “Those opinions cause us to doubt and criticize and question the value of…
A Counter Friction To Stop the Machine
The case of Bradley Manning matters. The reason is simple: He touched a nerve. Before releasing over 250,000 diplomatic cables to Wikileaks, Manning commented, “Hilary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going…
Epistolary Ecstasy
A while back, I read a selection of letters of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: Hand-written, wild-typed marvels and postcards, written and sent from around the world—on work, books, loves, life, loss, Dharma, and gossip….
Rachel
Over the years I’ve bought a few copies of Let Me Stand Alone: The Journals of Rachel Corrie But before I got to cracking it open for myself I would think of a young person…
Presence
“In my visits to the hospitals, I found it was in the simple matter of Personal Presence, and emanating ordinary cheer and magnetism, that I succeeded and help’d more than by medical nursing or delicacies,…