The Story of Stories: Why do We Tell Them? How Long Have We Told Them?
Not everyone can tell a gripping story but telling stories may be as integral to the evolution of Homo sapiens …
Category Archives: Books
Tigers on the Tenth Day — Fabled Syria
Zakaria Tamer (b 1931 in Damascus) has been in exile from his native Syria in England since the early 1980s where …
Hell and Good Company: The Spanish Civil War….
The civil war in Spain, 1936-1939, was the dark warning to the world of the war to follow, in almost every …
The Big Short: The Street, The Book, The Movie
There are no good guys in Adam McKay’s new movie, The Big Short, nor in the book of the same name …
Walking Through Spain, A Villanelle
Walking Through Spain, A Villanelle Walking through Spain on knotted, riven knees toes soaked in pain backs bent to the …
Enough! — Algerian Film Maker looks at War
Djamila Sahraoui (b 1950) Algerian born director, now living in France was 41 when the thirteen year civil war erupted in …
William Faulkner and WW I: A Fable
Since I’ve been sparse in posting these last weeks, for various (all good) reasons, I thought I’d re-post this look …
The Vice of War
William Faulkner, in his little known (Pulitzer) novel, A Fable, has many pungent things to say about man and war, …
Thinking of the Tao Te Ching After the (Persian Gulf) War
A poem by by Thom Tammaro: “Lao Tzu, I think of you at the gates of Chou near Han Ku Pass, …
A Stray Bullet — a Poem by Mazen Maarouf
A Stray Bullet After crossing the living room, the library, the corridor and the photo that brings us together on …
Bitter Searching of the Heart
Villanelle for Our Time From bitter searching of the heart, Quickened with passion and with pain We rise to play …
Trumbo: On the Black List for Being Red
Yep. Go see it. Good, straight-ahead story, mixed fabulously well with archival footage of the era – the ’40s and …