“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 always watch their faces when they slip the needle into the vein; I don’t care to watch the stick, and their expressions are usually such wonderful studies in professional ease and concentration. At 6 in the morning, Kofi continued to answer my questions as he took my blood, but in beginning he told me that I was his first client and this arm his first arm and then he smiled and […]
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You Can Listen Here I know nothing of serious hunger. I have vague memories as a child of fasting on Good Fridays, my Mother waiting until the stroke of 3, the time of Christ’s death, to give us a snack. I taught more than a few children who received free breakfasts and free lunches and whose parents struggled to keep afloat. I went four days without food as part of a NOLS course and lost […]
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You Can Listen Here Baker looks fearsome; he is not the dog you want to see materialize in the night as you walk to a stranger’s front door. He watches, and he’s big, about 75 pounds big, and he has the face of a journeyman boxer, pinkish where you might expect scar tissue, but he is only eight months old, and last Thursday morning he climbed into my lap where we perched together on a grassy hill. […]
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You Can Listen Here When I imagine talking animals (which is a more prudent beginning that to write “When animals speak to me….”), I hear vultures’ voices cracking like an old man’s, tinder dry and throaty, as if they were all doing imitations of Don Vito Corleone in his final meeting with Michael: “I drink more wine than I used to.” They have not aged well, especially in close ups — a pinkish-red, naked head; […]
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