I have been trying to clear my mind of obstacles so I can think without the impediments created by attachment to things as they appear to be. If that sounds a little abstract, imagine a farmer prying stumps or boulders out of a field before plowing and sowing; or a painter smoothing and priming a …
Want to watch a movie? How about watching with friends in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro at the same time? Starting at 11 a.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, 10 May, 2008, Pangea Day will be celebrated with a four-hour program of short films and music. It will be screened in …
Passover—Pesach—starts Saturday night. This holiday, halfway into the Hebrew calendar year, invites us to consider the story of the exodus from slavery—from Mitzrayim (which means Egypt and also straits or narrow, constricting places)—as if it had happened to us, as if it were happening right now. Every year, holiday preparations ask us to seek out …
I wrote this on the plane home after a week on the road, so grateful I wasn’t booked on American Airlines that my good cheer was barely dented by a late departure and the fact that the passenger in front of me reclined her seat so far, I couldn’t quite see the screen of my …
Thousand Kites, the project started by artists to awaken our national conscience to the realities of our prison-industrial complex—the planet’s biggest and most costly, bar none—has launched a great new Web site where you can learn about and make use of theater, video, audio and other tools to involve your community. You can share stories, …
There are two sides to the human proclivity to view the big world through the little world of our own experience. When I’m depressed, I project my misery outward: the disturbing headlines jump out of the newspaper and pile up at my feet; only the bad news seems true, and the rest recedes. When I’m …
When I read earlier this week these words of the Dalai Lama on the Chinese murders of Tibetans demonstrating for human rights and self-determination, I was moved by the depth of helplessness expressed by this great teacher who is seldom seen as shaken. The Dalai Lama’s quiet words struck me as it would to see …
Geraldine Ferraro was unrepentant this week as she stepped down from her post on Hillary Clinton’s campaign finance committee after having inserted her foot into her own mouth well past the knee. “If Obama was a white man,” she said, “he would not be in this position.” Trying to make it better, she dissed herself: …
The Germans have a word for it—schadenfreude—joining the words for joy and harm to mean taking pleasure in someone else’s misfortune. The Eliot Spitzer scandal fascinates me because it offers a veritable typology of schadenfreude. Most everyone was briefly shocked—I say, shocked—to learn of the New York governor’s involvement with prostitutes, which we all immediately …
A few days before International Women’s Day (March 8th, yesterday), a friend and I were talking about the results of the Ohio and Texas primaries. I shocked myself to notice how deeply devastated I’d been that Obama hadn’t won big in both states, even though my rational mind knew he was still in the lead, …