Reflections on the Intellectual Life by Irina S.
In one of my classes, we are reading a variety of books on the love of learning. I asked Irina (a nom de plume) if she’d be willing to share a few reflections on Zena…
Category: Activists
Letter, 19 August 2014
Dear Candice, Yesterday, even as I was contemplating taking a break from Facebook, I noticed that there was an event calling for people to come downtown for a protest re: Ferguson. The goal was…
Chinese Communists, Vietnamese Buddhists
Liu Shao-Chi, How To be a Good CommunistForeign Language Press, Peking 1964 Thich Nhat Hanh, Interbeing: Commentaries on the Tiep Hien PreceptsParralax Press, Berkeley, 1987 An immature revolutionary has to go through a long process…
Share the Wealth with Danielle Mackey: Thinking Critically about Violence in Central America
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…
Dear Daisy Zamora
(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…
Power Versus Love
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…
Thank You, Liz!
Liz Burkemper sent me news that Ai Weiwei’s memoir is coming out tomorrow!
Remembrance of Teachers Past
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…
Stamps and a Poem
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, An Elegy to Dispel Gloom
The Plan
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.