Blog 12.19.2017 CHRISTMAS I have a reason for not being anxious to celebrate Advent and Christmas Day. Sixty years ago, my father died on December 25. Fifty-nine years ago, my favorite uncle died a few days before Christmas. I do want other people to be happy, but I am most at peace when Christmas has gone with the snow, the sunshine or rain, the wind. I still say "Merry Christmas." The only genuine happiness I experience, however, is listening to Handel's "The Messiah" and a few songs I've treasured since childhood, attending Midnight Mass, having home-made fruitcake after Mass, and eating a special meal with relatives on the excessively commercialized holiday. KWANZAA Umoja ---Decide with whom you should seek unity. Kujichagulia --Expand the terms of engagement for 2018. Ujima ---Cooperate on a project with people you can trust. Ujamaa --Be frugal. Shop selectively. Nia ---Remember ou...
Implacable Violence, Part One The death of Senator John McCain quickens our interest in how to deal with contemporary narratives of life history. McCain's touchstone story pertains to American conservative values, the consequences of trauma, military and public service, violence, and a sense of honor. Barack Obama's differently remarkable narratives direct attention to the absence of military service, class and caste violence, the audacity of hope, centralist values, and diversity in the history of "race." Narratives about McCain and Obama stand in noteworthy contrast to future narratives about Donald Trump, stories that may place ego in the foreground as they unfold tales of sexism, constipated values, inadvertent racism, the violence of capitalism, sleight of mouth, and avoidance of military service. Ego, self-fashioning, and boldness are apparent in the three sets of narrative, but excess lynches the Trump set...
THE POEM UNDONE To be addressed at a beach she thought most square. To be called to a window to see what ought to be heard. What might sting like a mosquito infecting one with knowledge. She thought of Yeats, of Leda, of time, the coming of a terrifying swan. Did he say the sea's calm, tamed by moonbeams, when sound visualized is turbulent? Is music's allegory of war no more than conceits of violence gathering to clash in the death of light? How violated can a body be? What's put in pain by a mosquito's ignorant gift, by its eternal tweet of sadness, by retarded misery's ebb and flow and slow torture of climate changing? Such faith, such hope, such charity did Antigone, imitating Isis, sprinkle on a corpse. Honi soit qui mal y pense and mea culpa invades the heart. Tragedy has gone with the breeze somewhere to fall apart in another country, t o alarm with ...
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