“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 I read A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas for the first time when I was 22; then I listened to Thomas’s audio rendition on an LP played on a Singer stereo record player, rising to flip the disc over and grab more coffee and cake. His delivery was unlike anything I had ever heard. I did nothing except listen. Seven sentences in and I was caught, entranced, by […]
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For audio version click here This is how each day should begin. Walking directly west on my road early this morning, the bright sun to my back, I saw something big high up in a broken-limbed tulip poplar at the edge of some scrubby woods. I thought at first it was a balloon, dark with a silver edge to it, some migrant from a child’s birthday party. No, it was too big and too balanced. […]
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For audio version click here : The corn has been cut and the stalks at ground level look like the frayed ruins of a bombed city. I’m on my haunches looking at a dead rabbit discovered by Wolfie. It has been torn apart. It spreads out below me, red flesh set against all this mud. I am tired of rain and mud – gray-brown mud, black-brown mud, pooled mud, squashed mud. At the edge of […]
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For audio version click here : I once knew a man who could bend nails with his bare hands. I saw him take a 60 penny nail (6 inches in length) and twist it into a U. Slim “The Hammerman” Farman was the father of one of my students. Over 30 years ago, I saw him perform at Zern’s Farmer’s Market. He lifted two sledgehammers by the ends of their handles and extended them in front of […]
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