I’d like to talk a bit about — and think aloud with the gathered friends — ways to see violence in Central America through a critical lens. Often, Central America is summed up as the…
(After Reading Riverbed of Memory) I admit itI am filled with guiltWe didn’t do enough back in the 80sWhen the Reaganites were determinedTo crush the RevolutionTrue, you might say, the Sandinistas were far from perfectBut…
Robert Topmiller, The Lotus Unleashed: The Buddhist Peace Movement in South Vietnam, 1964-1966 We are not savages; we are people with an ancient culture, and we are sick in our bones of war. I do…
Liz Burkemper sent me news that Ai Weiwei’s memoir is coming out tomorrow!
Elie Wiesel, Somewhere a Master: Further Hasidic Portraits and Legends This is Elie Wiesel’s third of four installments thus far on his favorite Hasidic teachers, the ones whose tales enchanted him in his childhood, the…
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, An Elegy to Dispel Gloom
My friend Andrew Wimmer’s comment on the above: Of course they have. It was never “on the table.” It’s not a shame, it’s the plan.
Robert Johnson played last night at that café on Sugar Street. Walt Whitman was detained after chanting “Song of the Open Road” at the Huwarra Checkpoint. Dorothy Day was photographed again just sitting in the…
April 6, 2005 Dear Andrew, I recently finished a small book by Edward Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, and it made me think of many conversations we’ve had over the past couple of years. So…
As my 61st birthday approaches, I’ve noticed that I have recently been going back to authors and works I read many years ago. For example, I’ve been reading Thomas Merton’s Asian Journal, William D. Miller’s…