Putting Marginalia to Use
for Danielle Mackey Eduardo Galeano, The Book of Embraces 31 Saturday October 2009 I reread this book for one reason: To see if it could help me generate some ideas as to form and content…
Category: World Literature
Reminder to Self
When you encounter those who are wicked, unrighteous, foolish, dim-witted, deformed, vicious, chronically ill, lonely, unfortunate, or handicapped, you should think: “How can I save them?” And even if there is nothing you can do,…
“It’s the Old Thoreau Tradition”
This morning I was reading a 1972 interview with poet Allen Ginsberg and came across the following exchange… YLP: I was surprised to see the importance young Americans grant now to the Do It Yourself…
Two Ways of Looking at a Plague…
Ernesto Cardenal, Zero Hour And Other Documentary Poems New Directions, 1980 Dear Chase & Liz, The Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal died on March 1. I’m going back over his works this spring under quarantine. I…
A Meditation on History by Vasily Grossman
Can we call someone a great man if he has not brought into people’s lives a single atom of good, a single atom of freedom and intelligence? Can we call someone a great man if…
The Path of Sympathy in a Time of Plague
Tarrou was swinging his leg, tapping he terrace lightly with his heel, as he concluded. After a short silence the doctor raised himself a little in his chair and asked if Tarrou had an idea…
Real Butchers
Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murat Translators, Pevear and Volokhonsky I should read this short novel every year, in January. This time I read it thinking of Vietnam, the American occupiers (Russians), the indigenous resistance (Chechens), and…
There and Then, Here and Now
A lady: Yes, that’s just like what goes on nowadays, and it’s because anyone that is struggling for the liberation of the oppressed, he himself is a Christ, and then here’s a Herod, and what…
Cultivating Attention and Animating Conscience: Reading Thoreau in Desperate Times
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I…
Share the Wealth with Jack Renard: Reflections on a Life in Islamic Studies
This sharing will revolve around questions I get frequently: Whatever led you to choose this as an academic specialization? Why does Islamic religious studies matter? What do Islamic religious studies specialists actually study, and what…