“The Warriors” and “What It’s Like to Go to War”: Two Wars, Two Marines, Two Conclusions
I took on my first assigned reading in fifty years last month, for a seminar at Juniata college in Pennsylvania. …
Category Archives: Art & Culture
Twigs — by Taha Muhammad Ali
As I contemplate yet another birthday, this, one of the famous ‘ends in zero’ years, I thought I’d post perhaps …
Nixon and Kissinger: The Blood Keeps Seeping
I’ve been reading Daniel Ellsberg’s Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers to be reminded again of the …
Properties of Light — A Novel of Science and Sorrow
Being intrigued by the mysteries of physics, especially the exotic regions of quantum mechanics, does not mean understanding an iota …
i sing of Olaf glad and big — ee cummings
I’ve been reconnecting lately with friends who were resisters to the war in Vietnam, some as organizers, some who went …
First Love
First Love for José Angel Valente You were my first …
Kindness, a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye
A friend who read my earlier post about Ira Sandperl and his book “A Little Kinder” sent me this wonderful …
A Little Kinder: An Old Friend Moves On
George Saunders, the celebrated American fiction writer, gave a commencement speech of the kind we all wish we’d had, to …
The Butler: 34 Years in the White House
We joined with many last night who have appreciated Lee Daniel’s production of The Butler, a fictionalized take on the …
Gas Attacks
Reposting this first of all anti-war poems to make an impact on me as a young man, as news of …
Seamus Heaney Gone, Long Live His Tongue
Seamus Heaney has left us a lifetime-left of reading and contemplation. Here are two from “The Cure at Troy,” Heaney’s …
Stride Piano at SF Jazz
Wow! I had not been to the new SF Jazz center which opened this past January until Sunday night when …