I’m voting for Hillary Clinton. Here’s a quote from my friend Keryl McCord’s Facebook post that explains why: So tonight I’m calling bullshit on progressives who still think that voting for, well, you know, Voldemort, is okay for progressives because it isn’t. You may want the system to be destroyed but the dogs of war …
What is the incentive to choose justice, even at the expense of one’s own privilege? Over the weekend, I published a thought experiment: something we try on in our minds—often something that can’t actually be accomplished in real life, e.g., Schrodinger’s cat or Searle’s Chinese Room are two classics—to reveal something new. My thought experiment …
People are posting a brief video clip excerpted from a mid-nineties film on educator Jane Elliott’s work. The clip shows her addressing a large audience, predominantly white people: I want every white person in this room who would be happy to be treated as this society in general treats our citizens, our black citizens—if you …
What is scapegoating? When a man opens assault-weapon fire at a gay nightclub and murders more people than any lone assassin in U.S. history, and before more than a smattering of information about his life and motives surfaces, politicians rush to outdo each other in attributing his deranged and evil act to his religion. (See …
At the Indiegogo site for The Boys Who Said NO!, a film-in-progress directed by my old friend Judith Ehrlich, you can read producer Chris Jones’ 1967 letter from his draft board in San Jose, warning him of the penalty for refusing to register with the Selective Service System. A week before, Jones had sent this …
I sat down to write about John Trudell’s music, thinking to write the second in a series I’m calling “A Life in Art.” Back in November, I described the blogs in this series as “turning on a work of art—painting, sculpture, music, poetry, film, maybe even cooking—that has sustained me in a moment that yearned …
For so many years, wherever I moved (I lost count around 25 moves), I hung a print of Zurbarán’s Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose on the bedroom wall, positioning it so I could lie in bed filling my gaze with its sublimity. The glass was chipped in one move, but I went …
My husband is driving this noisy16-foot truck filled with his studio materials and tools to our new home in New Mexico. A month ago, we caravanned southeast along this same route: part one of the move, our worldly goods. If I’ve been MIA (and I surely have), that’s why—packing up, moving, unpacking, all the arrangements …
Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish won the 2015 PEN/Faulkner Fiction Award this week. I have nothing to say about the book, since I haven’t yet read it. The writer’s name gave rise to my subject. Reading it released a memory rush that’s been cycling just behind my eyes ever since. The author’s …
SELMA. A few days ago, an estimated 40,000 people descended on Selma, Alabama, for the 50th anniversary of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (and recently portrayed in Ava DuVernay’s film) and of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the landmark civil rights legislation passed in its …