The Cockburns
It would take the pen of Swift to evoke the nauseating scenes of hypocrisy, bad faith and self-delusion on the White House lawn on September 13, crammed as it was with people who for long…
Author: Mark J. Chmiel
Readers
Idleness is a disease which must be combated; but I would not advise a rigid adherence to a particular plan of study. I myself have never persisted in any plan for two days together. A…
From Chiapas to Rafah
The indigenous peoples who support our just cause have decided to resist without surrender, without accepting the alms with which the supreme government hopes to buy them. And they have decided this because they have…
Endings/Continuings
The end of Yiddish, except as an academic pursuit or as a final nostalgia, is not at all Kafkaesque. Jewish history has many ironies and countless sorrows, as well as a panoply of cultural achievements…
Meanwhile, Elsewhere in the World/529…
At this very minute, in other corners of Mexico and the world, a man, a woman, an other, a little girl, a little boy, an elderly man, an elderly woman, a memory, is beaten cruelly…
Ginsberg Variations
“Catch yourself thinking.” —Allen Ginsberg, “Cosmopolitan Greetings” Catch myself gossiping. Catch myself kvetching. Catch myself zoning out. Catch myself sneering. Catch myself smirking. Catch myself looking away. Catch myself signaling. Catch myself signing off superciliously….
Prophetic Persistence
My friend Pat Geier gave this homily to the Loretto Community. Palm Sunday 2021Isaiah 50:4-7Phil. 2:6-11Mark 11:1-10 The story of that first Palm Sunday as told by Mark would have made for good optics. If…
An Anti-Defamation League unto Himself
I’ve read half of Philip Roth’s books, a few more than once. Recently I returned to the novel Operation Shylock and was struck by this testimonial outburst of one of the characters— “‘Grant me that…
The Art of Living: Lights from Asia–A Spring-Summer-Fall Class 2021
Instead of going out of your way to seek the extraordinary, what if you could live in a more carefree way, just by subtly changing your regular, everyday life? —Shunmyo Masuno, Japan Sometimes I feel…
Doing Poetic Battle with the United States of Amnesia
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Time of Useful Consciousness* (Americus, Book II) New Directions, 2012 This is Larry’s next installment of pastiche… of his own work, as he continues the Americus odyssey through U.S. history. I wonder what…