What do you suppose the most compassionate person in Iraq thought when the killings at Virginia Tech made headlines last week? Here’s how I imagine it: “What a terrible thing! May their souls rest in peace. Forgive me for saying so, but perhaps the Americans will now begin to understand how we feel when our …
A wise friend reminded me yesterday that the lotus grows from putrefaction. Everywhere we look, nature teaches this lesson, that new hope rises only where something has been destroyed. This has been a difficult time for me. In typical generational fashion, an apropos song lyric has been braiding itself into my thoughts, jutting into awareness …
I’m snowed into a hotel room in Madison, Wisconsin, setting the alarm for 4:15 a.m. to make my replacement flight home. Ah, life on the open road! What to do with my suddenly free time? Blog, of course. One of the dedicated arts people I met on this trip forwarded me an article from The …
On Friday, I went to rottentomatoes.com to check out the reviews for several films we were thinking about seeing. They all had high scores, meaning most reviewers loved them. But in every case, if you scrolled down far enough, there would be one or two writers who rated them “superficial pap” or something like it. …
It’s official. In the Zeitgeist sweepstakes, my generation wins the Gold Medal for Self-Importance. The contest ended when “our” generational PBS documentary came packaged with this title: Boomer Century: 1946-2006. We’re claiming 40 years that haven’t even happened yet! By that standard, “the Greatest Generation” of World War II vets is a bunch of pikers.
Can anyone give me the Talmudic citation for the teaching “Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member”? (Just kidding. It’s Groucho Marx.) We Americans have this silly addiction to top 10 (40, 50) lists. I suppose it began as a marketing artifact (and …
The last six months have been some of the most interesting of my life as a writer and speaker. Since New Creative Community was published in November, I’ve been visiting conferences and campuses, giving talks and workshops to artists, activists, funders, policy-makers and students. I’ve met hundreds of people, seen all kinds of work, had …
I’m in Appalachia, watching snow fall on daffodil buds and the new green leaves of day lilies that will bloom, I am told, on the first day of summer. Once again, I’m working with the Thousand Kites project, artists and activists using theater, film and computer media to surface the emerging story of our nation’s …
This morning’s New York Times reports protests from members of Congress over the FBI’s repeated abuses of the Patriot Act to spy illegally on citizens. Glenn A. Fine, the inspector general of the Justice Department, reported that the use of “national security letters,” authorizing warrentless spying, had escalated: There were 8,500 in 2000, the year …
The writer’s lament these days (one of them, anyway) is how many temptations the computer offers. Whenever I stumble over a block on the road to completion, there’s a captivating distraction just a few clicks away. Okay, it’s my lament AND my delight. And now it can be yours, thanks to the dear readers who …