On Susan Sontag, Trip to Hanoi
Journal, July 2005 Susan Sontag spent two weeks in North Vietnam in 1968, and wrote 90 pages about her experiences. (Perhaps I will cull from those notebooks I kept in Gaza and the West Bank…
With My Own Eyes: Israel and the Occupied Territories 1967-1973
An attorney who defended Palestinians in Israeli courts, Felicia Langer was an exemplar of accompaniment and focused, righteous indignation. In With My Own Eyes, she recounts some of her experiences in the first years of the…
Reading Dear Layla/2
One of the many pages I marked The beauty of this expression of love… –Chris Wallach
Reading Dear Layla/1
Ale Vázquez texted me the following photos and comments I understand this and feel it like an aching in my spine
Spiritual Exercises (for Social Workers, Nurses, Parents, Teachers, Students…)
“To take flight” every day! At least for a moment, which may be brief, so long as it is intense. A “spiritual exercise” every day—alone or in the company of a person who also wants…
War Stories
War is a lot of things I suppose, but it is not pure. And if there are issues of morality to be contended with, I think that the veterans’ stories are likely the key. They…
Why Did They Shoot Him? Questions from Iraq
[Another man approached me with the two children of his brother, killed by U.S. gunfire, by his side.] “This little boy and girl, their father was shot by the Americans. Who will take care of…
There’s Poetry and There’s Polemical Essays
Interviewer: Later this month you’ll be reading at the poetry festival, Split This Rock. Do you have an expectation for what you want the audience to take away from your reading? Alice Walker: A clearer…