William Lloyd Garrison: Remembering
At the memorial for William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, the one time slave and friend of Garrison’s, though long estranged …
Monthly Archives: January 2013
The Abolitionists: When so Few Did so Much
I’ve really learned a lot viewing the three-part PBS series, The Abolitionists. Having a lived a life committed to nonviolence …
The Guardian: A TV Show Worth Some Time
In our house television mostly serves as a movie screen — runs on French new-wave auteurs, old chestnuts from Hollywood’s …
The Good Soldier Švejk — Anarchic Humor Against War
Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk, ‘a certified idiot,’ tickles us into an anti-war, anti-militarism, anti-bureaucracy mood the more we read. Unlike …
Mali: Pain and Poetry
Though war and armed assaults in Mali have been much in the news lately good things continue to happen. Here, …
Easter Island: Object Lesson — but in What?
Last week at one of Long Now Foundation’s ongoing, and always interesting, seminars two archaeologists, Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo, presented evidence …
More Movie Violence: Staying On the Wagon
After holding myself into my seat to get to the end of Quentin Tanrantino’s Inglorious Basterds several years ago I …
Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power: Rachel Madow
Drift, by MSNBC’s popular news show host, Rachel Maddow, combines an easy and difficult read in one volume. Easy because …
Zero Dark Thirty: Is It Pornography?
I’ve been wrestling with myself about whether or not to see Zero Dark Thirty, not only because the violence is …
Catch-22, Still Catching 52 Years Later
I’ve just finished listening to the Audible reading of Joseph Heller’s famous novel, Catch-22. The reader Jay O. Sanders is wonderful. The …
Paradise of the Blind, a Novel from Vietnam, Duong Thu Huong
Paradise of the Blind (1988) is Duong Thu Huong’s second serious novel, following a series of popular short stories, a novel …