“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
This begins with a Philip Roth novel, with a minor character, a rookie State Policeman who loved patrol, who loved being “alone in the car, cruising, just driving the roads”, who “knew the area, all the roads, the woods, knew the businesses in town” and “found an enormous … satisfaction in driving by at night and checking them out ….” As best I can tell, from 1938 to 1940, […]
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For all the reach of images in an age of images, for all the outrage in an age of outrage, what is happening in the far northwest of China right now has been rendered essentially invisible and any moral fury at the crimes committed there, muted. Uighurs are a minority Muslim people of the far northwest Chinese province of Xinjiang, an area slightly smaller than Alaska. Somewhere between 11 […]
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I have been reading ravenously for so long that trying to say why I read is equivalent to trying to describe why I pull myself upright each morning and walk into the day. I can. I do. I know I must have that other voice in my head. In pre-literate, pre-written word eras, perhaps that is why storytellers and bards were accorded such honors. They were the creators of […]
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The body must have contrasts: stand and sit, work and crash, sweat and shower, bitter cold and sudden warmth opening us up as if we were cracking out of a shell. Tuesday was the day to be out even if one had to put aside the discomfiting weirdness of this being February 5 and almost 70. The Sun felt good on the skin. At a soaking wet Crow’s Nest , the […]
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