“Life Must Be Serious or It Can Go to the Devil”
Naguib Mahfouz, Mirrors [Al-Maraya] Illustrated by Seif Wanli Translated by Roger Allen —March 2005 What an odd book! It can be a goad to do something experimental in the future. It is a series of…
Share the Wealth with Xavier Vincent and Wendy Lee
Wendy is a Saint Louis University alum, and Xavier is a French native. They met in Shanghai, where their lives were established. Last summer, they uprooted from their comfortable life to pursue their long-term travel…
Sometime, Somewhere, Someone’s Saying…
Dear Bella Balaban “That higher-up in the Vietnamese Politburo who died of cancer—what a decent guy!” “I miss—I really do—our last dictator. He was so intelligent and really tried to make la Guardia more diverse.”…
Is Murdered Journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s “A Russian Diary” Only Relevant to Russians?
Anna Politkovskaya, A Russian Diary: A Journalist’s Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin’s Russia Random House, 2007 … the Russian people gave its consent. Nobody stood up. There were no demonstrations, mass…
Share the Wealth with Maggie Needham: From Treating Harry Potter as Sacred to Treating Each Other as Sacred
Last January, I started a discussion group based on one of my favorite podcasts, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. This January, I was hired on by the podcast to help manage dozens of local…
We, Unsubsidized and Unbridled
And it is my firm conviction that a man can learn more about poetry by really knowing and examining a few of the best poems than by meandering about among a great many. Language is…
Assange by Andrew Wimmer
There are several journalists worth reading in order to understand what is happening with Julian Assange and what is at stake. I’d suggest, too, that you avoid all media coverage, at least until you have…
Five Poems, Five Passages
Ezra Pound and Marcella Spann, ed. From Confucius to Cummings: An Anthology of Poetry New Directions, 1964 Guido Calvacanti, Sonnet 7 Saint Teresa d’Avila, Bookmark Elizabeth I, When I Was Fair and Young William Butler…
Finding One’s Lost Mind
Julia Ching, The Philosophical Letters of Wang Yang-ming University of South Carolina Press, 1972 I previously studied with delight Julia Ching’s To Acquire Wisdom: The Way of Wang Yang-ming. Wang was the towering philosophical figure…
Share the Wealth with J’Ann Allen–Entrusted with Poetry: From the Land of the Morning Calm
Sometime in early January I pulled out my collection of Korean poetry in translation and began reading, skimming is a more accurate description. Our granddaughter Michelle, three-fourths Korean, told me she wanted to take a…