What is to be done? I cannot forget, by some means distract myself, from the darkness that invests Washington, and seems to be gathering strength. This poem by Tennyson, giving voice to aged Ulysses, captures my sense of our situation. The aspiration, given the constraints of age as well as the advantage of experience…
I couldn’t listen. Last night after our philosophy discussion ended I departed for home. Tuning to NPR on the radio a few minutes after 9PM, the voice of President Trump filled the space around me. His labored reading of lines, halting enunciation of words, caused me to cringe inwardly. Feeling my disgust I changed…
LET’S REMAKE AMERICA GREAT by Richard Blanco Yes: Let’s reshoot America as a fantasy, a 90’s TV show in clearblack and white, sponsored by Kent cigarettes, Wonder Bread,and good old-fashioned war, again. Let’s re-create the backlotsuburb with rows of five bedroom homes for every Wilsonand Johnson, walled by perfectly trimmed hedges, weedlesslawns, and at…
The beautiful monster vomits a stream of watches clocks jewels knives silver coins & copper blood The well of time & trouble whiskey bottles perfume razor blades beads liquid insects hammers & thin nails the feet of birds eagle feathers & claws machine parts chrome teeth hair shards of pottery & skulls the ruins…
How I Became a Madman (Prologue) by Kahlil Gibrand You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen,—the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives,—I ran maskless through…
Yesterday afternoon I received a phone call from our oldest daughter. She was driving to the Central Dupage Hospital ER to request a CAT scan in order to better diagnose a possible hernia. I have had three hernia surgeries. I’ve experienced how painful a tear in the abdominal muscle wall can be. The…
Incantation By Czeslaw Milosz Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Pinsky Human reason is beautiful and invincible. No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books, No sentence of banishment can prevail against it. It establishes the universal ideas in language, And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice With capital letters, lie…
Mary Oliver has died. She was eighty three. I have a number of her books of poetry. Wild Geese You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your…
The source of this list has been lost. I cannot give attribution. I know that I am not the one who compiled these words. I think it is an act of resistance to share them in this era of disharmony, of unrestrained ego, of the illusion that conflict has a worthwhile outcome. Leadership demands…
Trump Stands with Saudis over Murder of Khashoggi By Mark Mazzetti and Ben Hubbard Nov. 20, 2018 WASHINGTON — President Trump has long viewed foreign policy as a series of business deals, stripped of values and idealism. But his 633-word statement on Tuesday about the brutal killing of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi showed…
