“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 My father loved the ocean, and when he visited Jersey, he sat on a towel, arms draped over his knees, and looked out into the distance. A man not given to speaking about himself, he never explained what drew him to that landscape — maybe the constant waves or the scattering of light, or the blue-gray horizon or how all of those carved out a place for his meditations. I […]
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You Can Listen Here On the summer solstice, a hot day, walking without the dogs transforms a parade into a walkabout. Instead of calling out commands and regulating their yipping runs through brush and fields like agreeable velociraptors, a comparative silence. No longer striding but stalking. Stopping. Listening. Waiting. Going still. Sitting in the wash of a breeze. Sometimes crouching along a tree line or next to high grass. Cutting my silhouette. And then thinking, “What […]
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You Can Listen Here Edwin ate with butter while the children and his wife had margarine. He demanded the first cuts of meat and always the best food; his wife and children made do. The maternal grandfather of Alma Vogels, Edwin Whitaker, a machinist, dark haired, pompadoured, clean shaven, “a dude”, Alma remembered, “a handsome man who liked the ladies,” deserted his diabetic wife, Alma’s grandmother (also named Alma), after the loss of 2 or 3 […]
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You Can Listen Here Murder creates pure chaos. It smashes life’s normal, forward progression — it eliminates continuity. It annihilates our belief in the reasonableness of the world — it assaults faith. It is the visitation of the monstrous to our safe havens. Mass murder expands that chaos to a degree profligate and virulent. Its consequences never stop. Generation after generation, its heirs will recall the names of the dead and the story of murder’s […]
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