The Way It Looked in 1987

A huge amount of work obviously remains to be done, and as the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza enters its third decade one realizes that the magnitude of liberation required can only…

Fiddling with the Archetypes

Gary Snyder, The Real Work: Interviews & Talks 1964-1979 I first learned of Gary Snyder in fictionalized form as the hero Japhy Ryder in Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums. Therein, as in real life, the…

Disponibilidade

I first learned this Portuguese word from Mev, when she worked in Brazil among so many radical, radiant Christians. Here’s how she defined it in her book, The Struggle Is One: “a disposition of openness…

The Long Trail behind You

Shirin Ebadi, with Azadeh Moaveni, Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope But a personal story is more powerful than any dry summary of why a given law should be changed. To attract people’s…

The Political Economy of Memory

Alan S. Rosenbaum, ed., Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide I read this book for my treatment of Wiesel and it gave me plenty of perspectives, arguments and insights. The question of the…

On Sunday Evenings, For Instance

If people meet regularly and know each other, they begin to feel whom they can trust and whom they cannot, who is constructive and who is not, and in the process of their own participation,…