When Simone Met Simone
Most interesting among [Alain’s disciples] was Simone Weil, the future author of Gravity and Grace, who was taking the same classes as the future author of The Second Sex. Simone Weil dressed oddly and always…
Category: Activists
Three Hours in the Morning
In Talking with Sartre, U.S. professor John Gerassi explores a fascinating range of subjects with the French intellectual, writer, and activist. At the book’s conclusion, Gerassi writes, “What we must do instead, he said, is…
December 10 Sunday Share the Wealth with Andrew Wimmer: Reckoning with Torture
In November 2005, Stop Torture Now, a project of the Center for Theology and Social Analysis in St. Louis, delivered a Peoples’ Indictment against Aero Contractors and the commissioners of the Johnston County airport in…
For All My Friends Who Are Free Spirits
“What is now proved was once only imagin’d.” –William Blake Free Spirits desire the emancipation of all humankind Free Spirits conceive a habitable, harmonian world Free Spirits know that no revolution has gone far enough…
After Reading a 2002 Book by Arundhati Roy
What is happening to our world is almost too colossal for human comprehension to contain. But it is a terrible, terrible thing. To contemplate its girth and circumference, to attempt to define it, to try…
Don’t Expect Applause
Tom Hayden was a major player in the antiwar movement of the 1960s as well as a familiar liberal and progressive activist, commentator, and researcher since. His last book is entitled, Hell No: The Forgotten…
A Beautiful Kaddish by Andrew Wimmer
I was writing in my Naikan notebook this morning, reflecting on some of what I’ve received from Andrew Wimmer. I remembered his “review” of The Book of Mev, and am happy to share it here….
Share the Wealth
Lynda Nana Gyedua Oppong shares a fact each Humanities class.
Gita/Gandhi
Not agitated By grief nor hankering after pleasure, They livs free from lust and fear and anger. Fettered no more by selfish attachments, They are not elated by good fortune Nor depressed by bad. Such…
Imagining Dubya Writing Barack
I came across the following when browsing Ralph Nader’s book, Return to Sender: Unanswered Letters to the President, 2001-2015. Ralph is not holding his breath that Obama’s successor will be any different. After nearly…