Notice What You Notice
Primo Levi: I never stopped recording the world and people around me, so much that I still have an unbelievably detailed image of them. I had an intense wish to understand, I was constantly pervaded…
Category: Compositions
Shame
1. “When we came to the camp, Hamzat led the khan into the tent. And I stayed with the horses. I was at the foot of the hill when shooting began in Hamzat’s tent. I…
Walt, Various
1. I was simmering, simmering, simmering; Emerson brought me to a boil.–Walt Whitman 2. In 1968 Susan Sontag visited Hanoi for two weeks. In her account of her experiences, she seemed a bit surprised the…
This, That, and the Other
1. An excerpt from my 2015 novel, Dear Layla/Welcome to Palestine: Corporate Citizen/1 (Products/2) Some things changed and some didn’t on September 11 It shocked and angered us To see products we had built to…
The Imperative To Remember
Anyone who does not actively, constantly engage in remembering and in making others remember is an accomplice of the enemy. Conversely, whoever opposes the enemy must take the side of his victims and communicate…
Bullet the Blue Sky
But most men, it seems to me, do not care for Nature and would sell their share in all her beauty, as long as they may live, for a stated sum—many for a glass of…
“Scribbled Secret Notebooks, and Wild Typewritten Pages, for Yr Own Joy”
Inspired by Diana Raab, Writers and Their Notebooks I read Raab’s book right about the end of my time at SLU. Moving on to Maryville University, I found a way to assign Natalie Goldberg’s Bones…
“Just Mow ‘Em Down”
Next month will mark the 50th anniversary of one of the very few well-known atrocities committed by U.S. forces in Vietnam. Compare mainstream coverage of this anniversary with the following … Michael Bilton and Kevin…
A Feat of Reading and Writing
1. [T]he sheer enormity of what took place between 1933 and 1945 beggars our powers of description and understanding. The more one studies this period and its excesses, the more one must conclude that for…
The Good News of Resistance, 4.22.2017
1. A while back, I was sitting outside at RISE with a young Irish-Jewish American friend who asked me, when I showed her a particular chapter in Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine, “Who is Abbie Hoffman?” …