“It’s critical,” my wise friend said, “that you continue to advocate for what you want without allowing yourself to be shaped by the limitations around you.” This is such a challenging idea, my head swims when I try to get a firm grip on it. In the personal realm, it arises with great force. Despite …
There they go again! A few right-wingers who want to defeat the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan now before Congress are using one of its smallest provisions, a $50 million supplemental allocation to the National Endowment for the Arts, as a dart they hope will let the air out of the bill. There aren’t a …
I haven’t had my driving-on-black-ice lesson yet. Weather conditions have been spectacularly cold, but there hasn’t been the right combination of temperature, precipitation and time off to open space for this particular learning experience—yet. Everyone is happy to offer advice, though. They tell me to drive slowly, brake slowly and turn slowly, so as to …
I’m in the midst of writing an article about public service employment for artists, an ideas whose time has once again come around. There are numerous proposals afloat and a semi-mysterious political process that will determine whether and how this idea will be implemented. I’ll be posting a link to my article and more information …
My Canadian friends and I were huddled together in hope, glued to CNN, when, a few minutes after 8 pm Pacific Time, the results put Barack Obama over the line and into the presidency. I felt something lift off my shoulders: a weight of shame called George W. Bush that had been lodged there so …
I’m in another airport, this time headed to Canada for a speaking engagement. I will be there on election night. I am planning rejoice in the company of North Americans who want regime change here just as much as I do. Every day brings news of the world’s interest in seeing Barack Obama elected U.S. …
“This time”—my friend stood over a sinkful of dirty dishes, a stricken expression on her face—”I’m voting as if my life depended on it.” Extreme energies of hope and fear are rising and ricocheting over every city and town in the nation. I wish there were a way to harness a forcefield of this magnitude: …
Yom Kippur begins tonight. This holy day is the fulcrum of the Jewish year: in preparation, we do a cheshbon hanefesh—a soul inventory—cleaning up our conduct and relationships to ready ourselves for the moment tonight when the beautiful Kol Nidre prayer is chanted, annulling all vows, reminding us that in the deepest place, in the …
If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ve seen me quote before from the Reverend James Lawson’s founding statement of principles for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee well over forty years ago. What SNCC was seeking, Lawson wrote, was “a social order or justice permeated by love.” This has become one of many mnemonics lodged in …
The difficulty I have wrapping my head around patriotism is one I sometimes share with other children of immigrants, those whose heritage, like mine, was stamped with the dark face of nationalism, the imprint of a patriotism that believed the country where our forebears were born would be purified by our absence. I feel deeply …