Apt Epigraph for Celia Farber’s Superb Book, “Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS”
“But power and greed and corruptible seedSeem to be all that there is” –Bob Dylan, Blind Willie McTell
He Made an Impression
“God grant us more such Russian rogues,” Marya Dmitrievna suddenly mixed in vexedly. “He lived a week with us; we saw nothing but good from him,” she said. “Courteous, wise, just.” –Leo Tolstoy, Hadji…
Share the Wealth with Katrina Becker and Jonna Caraccio: The Glories of Friendship
While many of us are all too happy to leave our awkward high school selves firmly in the past, every once in a while we come across parts of that life experience we’re grateful to…
Manufacturing Consent
And thus when, by a series of measures undertaken everywhere and at the same time—always thanks to the power in its hands at the command of the Government—a certain portion of the people, chiefly the…
The Golden Rule
Tzu-Kung asked saying, Is there any single saying that one can act upon all day and every day? The Master said, Perhaps the saying about consideration: ‘Never do to others what you would not like…
The Miracle of Being Awake
Suddenly some force shoved him in the chest, in the side, choked his breath still more, he fell through the hole, and there, at the end of the hole, something lit up. What was done…
How Some Saw Simone
A very Jewish soul. There was something of the Talmud in her. Very stringent in her logic. 206 [W]hat most struck me in her were her nobility, her straightforwardness, the purity of her soul. 218…
He Must Go on, He Can’t Go on, He’ll Go on
Everything was doomed [in 1943]: [Yankev Glatshteyn’s] people, his tradition, its language, his artistic freedom, his chances of contributing to a continuing literature. Even his awesome responsibility as the chronicler of the last days of…
The Canon in the Canon
Of all the gospels, the Sermon on the Mount was the portion that impressed me most, and I studied it more often than any other part. Nowhere else does Christ speak with such solemnity; nowhere…
Instruction for Whenever Watching or Listening to the Day’s News
Half-smile when irritated: When you realise you are irritated, half-smile at once. Inhale and exhale quietly, maintaining the half-smile for three breaths. –Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Being Awake