“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
You Can Listen Here: I had a dream a few nights ago about returning to school. This, after six years gone. I was standing in a hallway between deep currents of high school students. I faced a big window that looked north to the baseball field. The noise of the hallway was deafening. I felt such alarm, almost panic. All I remember thinking was, “I’m not ready. My room isn’t ready. What will I […]
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You Can Listen Here: When they grow excited, the children who rise from their pillows sometimes totter about as if they were auditioning to wear the Godzilla costume for a tiny-scale remake. Some go all out in offering prompted animal sounds, lifting their heads and closing their eyes and letting go their loud mewls and screeches and growly combustions. Then they follow my hand as I push down all the chaos and lift my […]
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You Can Listen Here: It is more important than it has been during my lifetime to affirm a love of country — love — not frat-boy braying, not proto-nazi wannabe nationalism, not predatory, mercenary f*** em’ all I got mine economics, not brain-dead grumbling resentment of anyone unwhite, but love, that abiding affection, that appreciation of sacrifice and actual heroism and the daily calm of democratic institutions, that yearning for us to be as […]
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You Can Listen Here: My friend voted for Trump. We do not talk politics in any exact way. Instead we circle it, wary of conflict, protective of something else, perhaps the companionability of our temperaments and our curiosity about the paths each life has taken to arrive here as friends. We do talk about the present state of the country. He laments the loss of community, the sense that everyone seems to be retreating […]
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