Durham of my youth was a sleepy town, seldom in the news. This changed with the advent of the Civil Rights movement of the mid 1960s. Durham was in the news recently. A crowd demonstrating against the implicit racism of the Trump administration pulled down the statue of the confederate solder that has stood…
Its Sunday morning. A few fellow guests join me for my morning coffee here at the Holiday Inn. I cannot help but overhear the collegial conversation of three older males, and several young adult males planning for a baseball game later in the day. I’d lay odds that the older guys are coaches, and…
A warm Fall evening is the perfect time for a walking exploration of Main Street Durham. The old street is substantially arrayed in 21st Century commerce and entertainment. Upscale Salons, Bars, Silicon Valley type incubators for fledgling business startups, and of course the restaurants, make up the mix of tenants for the old 20th…
Here I am in my hometown, Durham, North Carolina. It is hardly worth mention that much has changed since I left for the big city. The truism that “one cannot go home again,” is true with the sadness that is endemic to time. This place has changed and so have I. What was a…
Auschwitz (Laggiù, ad Auschwitz, lontano dalla Vistola) There, at Auschwitz, far from the Vistula, love, on the northern plain in a field of death: funereal, cold, rain on the rusted poles, and a tangle of steel fences: and no trees or birds in the grey air, or above our thought, but inertia and…
Today, the middle of the work week, the heat outside cools, it’s feeling a bit like Fall. Starbucks is a hubbub. Those present are regulars to my eye, parents, grandparents seated with children before the kids are off to school and the adults off to the days planned activities. The world is a collection…
Another day of news. What is to be done for wrecked Puerto Rico? It is surreal. The residents of Puerto Rico are US citizens. For all practical purposes the island has been treated as a colony, stripped of wealth. The hurricane, a random, impartial Act-Of-Nature has pushed the island deeper into the debt-hole that…
Another hot late September day. It promises to be 90 degrees. Between our president and the leader of North Korea, another session of bitch-slapping, saber rattling. A formation of B-1 bombers and F-15 fighters made a pass along the coast of North Korea. What is the next move going to be and who will…
Its September 24, mid afternoon, and 90 degrees. According to the calendar it is Fall but you’d never know. It has been a while since an adequate rain, and the grass is fading from green to tan. I do not expect to become accustomed to these predicted unseasonal extreme-weather events. There will be no…
The South, too, was an earthly paradise. Not of course at all times, for all its inhabitants. There were the slaves. Yet the South, before the War between the States, had this of paradise left to it: it had the wholeness that embraced white and black in an apparent unity, even though the relationship…
