“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
For audio version click here It started with The Book; at least 70 years old, leather brown, cracked and dry, it measures 14″ long and 12” wide. Its pages bulge and leaf out at the ends. Brittle, a faded, dusty color, they break to the touch. Small pieces litter the table where I work. It overflows with post cards, announcements, poems, and an unknown number of newspaper clippings that record an earlier era in my […]
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For audio version click here This is the face that criminals saw. His corporal’s stripes indicate that he is in his late 40’s and thus in his prime. He ended his career as a sergeant when he was 59. The photographer used a canvas or paper backdrop. His seated figure is sharply drawn against its blankness; its negative space accentuates the strength of the pose. I can draw a straight line from the peak of his […]
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For audio version click here The first minutes of Hugo are everything that movies first promised us — a new creation, another way of seeing this world, compositions bursting with details and colors, minor characters whose small moments let slip the outlines of their entire lives, a protagonist instantly sympathetic and compelling. Oh, and we fly through a dreamlike Paris. This movie is Scorsese telling everyone, “This is what I have done with my life. […]
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For audio version click here Dickens had it right. In David Copperfield, published in 1850, he knew what schools should strive to do for children – “’Why, to make the child happy and useful.’”* Such happiness comes in being productive, in contributing to a part of life greater than oneself, in having a purpose and in being confident that one possesses the skills, knowledge and grit to be able to adapt and progress. The capacity […]
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